Dark Portal Reviews

Twenty oh-nine.

2010-01-02T12:00:00.007-05:00

2009 had a lot going for it, on a personal level. It marked my hopefully last year of college, when I started seriously dating again, and nobody was dying. Plus, I'm a democrat so Obama in the White House and the upcoming Health Reform Bill has me grinning. My year ended up being significantly more crap than I was initially expecting, but it wasn't all that bad all in all.

It has been unfortunate that I haven't read a single book that was written this year. I love reading, but while finishing my degree I've been reading a lot of older books and even in my private reading I find there are books of years past that I somehow missed. This will all be rectified when I get my Kindle (!) but it doesn't excuse that I have barely any books to review.

The state of movies this year is a big disappointment. I hate Harry Potter and Twilight with a fiery passion that only intense apathy can subdue. The new Transformers movie, as evident in my review of it, was Michael Bay's opus to jock-headed douchebags everywhere. I was let down by UP due to all the hype that surrounded it, and I thought The Hangover (again, as can be read here) was something completely different from the rest of the country. I finally saw Star Trek and Inglourious Basterds after Christmas and loved both of them. The movies I enjoyed were the hits such as District 9 and Star Trek, mostly. I never got a chance to see Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day, and I see that as a failure on my part. The year was a wreck, as most of the movies I saw were crap, and I didn't see all that many anyway. The Official Dark Portal Reviews Best Movie of 2009 is going to have to be Star Trek.

Star Trek worried me. Being a relatively avid Trekkie, I disliked the idea of a sequel/prequel/reboot of a series of television and film that has been among my top serials of all time. Robert Orci and Alex Kurtzman brought a good story to please old and new fans, and J.J. Abrams the directing the film needed to catch the eyes of both groups. Chris Pine came out of nowhere with his fantastic rendition of a youthful James Tiberius Kirk without imitating Shatner at all. Zachary Quinto, dispite my dislike for Heroes, has a decent Spock-ean look about him. I'm fairly certain he's the only Vulcan who could say "Live long and prosper" and have it mean "Screw yourself back to the blackhole." Anton Yelchin's Chekov grated my nerves, but Simon Pegg's Scotty made up for it. John Cho as Sulu warmed my heart, and probably did the same to George Takei. Karl Urban mad to have been channeling DeForest Kelley with every inflection he gave. The whole thing made me excited for the new series of films they're putting together for Gene Roddenberry's creation.

There were lots of video games this year--significantly more than the movies I saw. I used to have a reputation at my video game store of trying all the epically bad games to see just how bad they actually were. I did less of that this year, going for games like inFamous, UFC 2009 Undisputed, Brütal Legend, Borderlands, and The Saboteur bringing freshness to the video game scene, there were a slew of sequels kicking up dust like Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2, Left 4 Dead 2, and Assassin's Creed II. The year had a lot of games I thought were really lame as well. MadWorld was cool, but was too short and didn't have enough variety. Tekken 6 had so much to love, but the Mortal Kombat Armaggedon running-action gameplay which takes up most of it just isn't what I want to do when I put a Tekken game on. I think my title of Worst Game of All Time was beaten out with Jurassic: The Hunted surpassing the utter garbage that was Timeshift. The Dark Portal Reviews Best Video Game of 2009 is Borderlands.

Borderlands (PlayStation 3/Xbox 360/PC) was under my radar for a long time, and even when I got the game it sat on my table unopened for days. When I finally put it in, I didn't notice how much time had gone by until I had been playing for five hours. The game is literally what Diablo would have been were it a first-person shooter. The graphics are unique and don't push you away. Gearbox knows how to make shooters, being veterans of the first Half-Life spin-off, Opposing Force. The game can last forever, especially when playing on multiplayer, which only grew in fervor much like the Diablo series. With two DLC packs already, the game is still growing in value as to how much fun you can actually have with your game systems. It's super-challenging at times, and brutally easy the next, but the game is never hard enough to stop playing. The game carries its paper-thin story on graphics, gameplay, and humor that won't quit.

I didn't follow a lot of TV, as I usually wait for things to come out on DVD. The shows I did follow were Burn Notice, House, Doctor Who, Dexter, and Weeds. The shows I've been watching have been enjoyable, with not much bad to say about them. Weeds keeps finding more shit for the Botwins to find themselves in. Burn Notice was only on its sophomore season, and it didn't disappoint. Doctor Who has unfortunately been in short supply, but what did air were some gems of the show. Dexter was amazing with the Trinity story and the finale ended on a very emotional way. Dark Portal Reviews declares the best television series of 2009 is House. Even though it's not completely over, the premier of season six was possibly the single best episode of House I have ever seen and the progression of every character of the show into something different and new.

2009 was an eh year for music. Even with great releases from Weezer and Five Finger Death Punch, Killswitch Engage put out their most disappointing album to date. Lots of other bands I have historically followed had releases, and I'm only noticing that as I go back and look over a list of the year's musical releases on Wikipedia. Such is the cost of not being on the radio anymore. The Dark Portal Reviews Best Album of 2009 is--hands down--Raditude by Weezer.

Now that we've made it ten years into this new millennium, I think it's safe to say we're pretty much all screwed.

-Evan "Dez" O'Connor

The game ends with credits

2009-12-23T12:00:00.002-05:00

I got a Nintendo DS Lite. This is surprising, even for me, considering the last handheld video game system I owned was a Pikachu edition GameBoy Color that I still use when I am crazy bored. But now I have a DS, and now a whole slew of games I never had access to has opened itself to me.

The World Ends with You (2008) is an action role-playing game from RPG gurus, Square Enix. Square Enix as a company gets more fans jerking off at their games than Atlus, and as a GameStop employee I can tell how mind-boggling that is. As a rule, I am always hesitant to play a JRPG if only because I don't have the goddamn time to sit through them, anime graphics annoy the every-loving crap out of me, and after living with transgendered people in college I no longer enjoy making them hit monsters with giant swords. Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy X, EarthBound, and Super Mario RPG will always be fantastic games that I can always go back and play but the newer incarnations--even the Persona series which has amazing gameplay by chibi graphics that make me want to rip my eyes out--can rarely catch my attention. I picked up this shiny little title because, as I remember working the games release, it seemed different and somewhat cooler than the crappy console RPGs like Infinite Undiscovery that were out at the time. The World Ends with You ended up on my short list of games to try for the DS.

The game takes place in an alternate version Shibuya district of Tokyo that brings you, Neku Sakuraba, into a game designed to erase faces. You go through different games, because each time the designers of this game are dicking you over. I can't give a whole lot more away without ruining the whole thing, but that's the fun of role-playing games.

The story aside, the gameplay is kind of a lot of fun. You drag your character from one long dialogue-heavy cut scene to the next, but the part that's fun is the battle system. You are forced to fight the same battle on the top and bottom screens, using various touch commands on the touch screen and pounding the D-pad for the top. As you progress through the game, you collect pins and have to pay attention to what brand of clothing will get you better or worse stats in different neighborhoods but I didn't buy the strategy guide so I pretty much just ignored it. The pins are what give you the different attacks, and you can sort them in ways that make the most sense, battle-wise. The Tin Pin Slam mini-game is a colossal pain in my ass, but that's my opinion of most mini-games.

As being among the first DS games to really grab my attention, I am enjoying it thoroughly. I had originally thought the DS would be a goof to me, something I pulled out when I was bored at lunch or waiting around for something trivial. I find myself reaching for it when I have a PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and Nintendo Wii within my grasp. The role-playing games for the DS--The World Ends with You in particular--bring a lot to the little handheld. I do still love throwing in Little Red Riding Hood's Zombie BBQ to kill a few minutes, though. My next venture should be to procure a PSP, I believe.

-Evan "Dez" O'Connor

Rad rats dude

2009-12-08T12:00:00.003-05:00

My pick for best album of 2008 was a hard one, coming down between Weezer's Red Album and Amanda Palmer's debut solo album, Who Killed Amanda Palmer. The latter ended up with the claim of the year, but Weezer is still just so good. I seemed to forget that, because this year's release didn't really interest me until I forced myself to listen to it.

Raditude by Weezer (2009) is the follow-up to The Red Album and, while not as good, delivers everything Weezer always has brought to the musical scene. Weezer is weird for me and many friends like me that they are nothing that would fall into our favorite music genres but they somehow make it onto our list of favorites anyhow. In fact, someone I work with claimed to not like them at all only to get picked up by the first single off this latest album on the ride home and has come to love them. I seem to be saying this a lot, as I think I've made it close enough to the end to make assumptions, but this may be the best album of the year.

To give blanket statements, the writing on the record is up to River Cuomo's standard of writing with very few exceptions which I feel are present on every Weezer album, the guitar work isn't as memorable as Hash Pipe days but it gets the job done, and the album is really a joy to listen to. Songs like (If You're Wondering If I Want You To) I Want You To, I'm Your Daddy, Trippin' Down the Freeway, and Let It All Hang Out are great songs, written with Weezer's typical wit and charm. After seven albums, they still manage to experiment with songs like Can't Stop Partying (a bass-ridden party beat featuring Lil Wayne) and Love is the Answer (a song laced with Hindi language and vocals), which are really well done for such a bold attempt. Put Me Back Together and I Don't Want to Let You Go are perfectly listenable, but don't necessarily bring anything special to the album. The two songs I skip over are The Girl Got Hot and Patrick Wilson's In the Mall. The writing on both the songs are just subpar for what Weezer is capable of.

The deluxe edition that I bought has four bonus tracks which I feel are good enough to have been on the album proper. Get Me Some is almost a hard rock party song, where Run Over By A Truck is like classic Weezer. The Prettiest Girl In The Whole Wide World reminds me a lot of The Greatest Man That Ever Lived from the Red Album and I really appreciate the lyrical work put into it. The Underdogs is really just a fantastic ending for the album, giving the whole experience an over-all feel.

What really sucks is the reason I started listening to the album is because I had gotten Weezer tickets for my girlfriend, the show being last night, and Rivers Cuomo's bus spun out on black ice and ended with his family needing to be dug out of the car using the jaws of life. Rivers has broken ribs, but the rest of the Cuomo's are thankfully unharmed. My best wishes to the Cuomo family, but I hate winter disappears and never comes back. If they reschedule, I will be among the first to get replacement tickets.

Expect some end of the year lists coming out over the next few Saturdays.

-Evan "Dez" O'Connor

The Big Reviewski

2009-11-27T12:00:00.000-05:00

Way back in the nineties there was this movie I wanna tell ya about. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense. But then again, maybe that's why I found it so darned interestin'. 'Course I ain't never been to London, and I ain't never seen France. And I ain't never seen no queen in her damned undies, so the feller says. But I'll tell you what--after seeing this movie, and writing this here review I'm about to unfold, well, I guess I seen somethin' every bit as stupefyin' as you'd seen in any of them other places. And in English, too. So I can die with a smile on my face, without feelin' like the good Lord gypped me. Now this here review I'm about to unfold is about a movie took place in the early '90s--just about the time of our conflict with Sad'm and the I-raqis. I only mention it because sometimes there's a movie...I won't say a classic, 'cause, what's a classic? Sometimes, there's a movie. Sometimes, there's a movie, well, it's the movie for its time and place. It fits right in there. And even if it's a crazy movie--and it was most certainly that. Quite possibly the craziest in all of nineties comedies, which would place it high in the runnin' for craziest of all time. Sometimes there's a movie, sometimes, there's a movie. Well, I lost my train of thought here. But...aw, hell. I've done introduced it enough.

The Big Lebowski (1998) is the movie for the nineties, but you should seriously have realized that by now. Even being the film buff I am now, there are some classic movies that I have simply not had the opportunity to see. The Big Lebowski formerly among them, this list also includes Citizen Kane, all the Godfather movies, any of the Rocky movies, or any of the Nightmare on Elm Street films being doubly surprising to my love for horror. I simply never had to opportunity to see any of these films and only kind of passively desire to do so. Someday, when I own every DVD I want this will all be solved. Some films that will be on that list include all of Sam Raimi's horror films, and everything the Coen brothers have done.

The Big Lebowski is a film by the Coen brothers based on someone they actually encountered. Although the events in the movie are all based on "What if this happened to our friend?" and then wrote out the scenario, it is still boggling to wrap my head around that. The film is narrated through Sam Elliott drawl. It stars the likes of Jeff Bridges, John Goodman, and Steve Buscemi. Written and directed by Ethan and Joel Coen, they employed Carter Burwell (score for In Bruges and Where the Wild Things Are to his credit) for the music. The team behind this film is pretty genius, and the movie shapes up to live up to it.

The movie, if you haven't seen it, is about the Dude who shares a name with a rich-as-hell gentleman with no legs. This leads to a mix up that ends with the Duder's rug being peed on. This leads to a screwball comedy the likes of Dude, Where's My Car or The Hangover, but pulls it off better than both--perhaps because it was here first. The character Jeff Bridges portrays as the Dude is brilliant, being a stoner with a love for White Russians, Creedence Clearwater Revival, and bowling but is still smart enough to unravel this retardedly complex scheme that pretty much ends with him being screwed over and then comes out on top of it with the help of his psychotic friends.

The writing needed in order to achieve that in a something you need or your movie is going to fail, and has to have an ending worth all of it. The Coen brothers did everything they could with the story, with directing to match the sky-high spirit of the film. T-Bone Burnett, the person responsible for the songs chosen for the soundtrack of the film, made the perfect movie choices; they went perfectly with the Coen's directing and matched the mood and you know what--I hate the Eagles too.

The Big Lebowski is a movie that you should see if you haven't already. Sure, you may think The Hangover was better and that's okay--you have the right to think that. It just doesn't make you any more wrong, if only because the Dude actually exists somewhere. The Coen brother's use their powers of writing and directing to make a purely enjoyable movie, and this movie is probably their best comedy. To those offended, I pledge to see The Godfather soon. I will probably not review it.

-Evan "Dez" O'Connor

Paging The Doctor to the Red Planet

2009-11-21T12:00:00.002-05:00

Seven long months have gone by since I have seen a new Doctor Who episode. This is unacceptable. Finally the new episode comes, and I know nothing about it. I avoid Doctor Who spoilers like the plague, because I want to feel the excitement of watching the story unfold without any expectations or knowledge of where the story is going, save for what they show in the "Next time..." trailers at the end of the episodes. I waited and waited, as did others, but I believe I may be the first among my group of friends to see what has been the third episode of Doctor Who since Christmas of 2008.

The Waters of Mars brought a lot to the table for The Doctor as a character, and the writers of the program. It being the first thing Russell T Davies has done since the Torchwood miniseries over the summer, which showed a lot of talent in its own right. I was looking forward to something tense and gripping just like Children of Earth was. The Waters of Mars delivered what I wanted from it--mostly.

The story goes as The Doctor lands on Mars, he comes to arrive at the knowledge that he landed on a very important date--like Volcano Day. He's forced to walk away, in one of the best directed Doctor Who scenes I have ever seen by the way of Graeme Harper, the longest serving member of the Doctor Who crew, having started directing for the series in 1963. He is overcome by a wave of what can only be called arrogance, and becomes a Doctor I'm not quite comfortable with, at least not as played by David Tennant. The episode ends and the Time Lord has returned to his original philosophy, but he goes through a amazing build to this point of view that really doesn't feel right to the character at all. Usually, when the series does something that doesn't quite make sense it all comes together in an amazing crescendo at the end, which I am definitely looking forward to.

The directing, as already said, is some of the best I have seen of any of the series. Russell T. Davies' writing also lived up to my expectations. The story was well-done, especially bringing up what's happened in previous specials, the growth of the character, and leading into David Tennant's last episodes as The Doctor with fervor. It may have been one of Tennant's best performances in the series, and the ensemble of Lindsay Duncan and company matches the best of any of his companions, especially with the part of Adelaide Brooke.

Luckily, the next two episodes are airing within a month and a half. Doctor Who is an amazing accomplishment in television, and the new series continues to live up to its traditions. The special episodes, tracking The Doctor's final journey's without companions are still lacking in the way that they are not a proper season, only airing five stories with anywhere from one to seven months between them. Once the specials are done, I'll stop reviewing each Doctor Who episode.

-Evan "Dez" O'Connor

CoD fOr ToO

2009-11-18T12:00:00.014-05:00

Where EA used to be the company that would only publish the same crap every year and screw the consumer and comedy outlets out of fun and money, Activision has very clearly taken its place while Electronic Arts continues to lighten up and come out with some really good games and deals. I really dislike giving Activision money by buying their games and have literally waited to buy them used just to avoid giving CEO Robert Kotick another dime. Kotick, if you didn't know, tried to get EA to not publish Brütal Legend by suing, claiming that they still had rights to it--which Activision obviously did not. Kotick said, when asked about the high prices of bundles such as Guitar Hero, DJ Hero, and Tony Hawk: Ride, "If it were up to me, I'd raise the prices even further." He has openly said that his mission is to take the fun out of video games. I just have a problem supporting another asshole, despite the quality of the product. However, I made an exception for this game.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (Xbox 360/PlayStation 3) is just about the biggest game release ever. Going back to Infinity Ward, the original makers of Call of Duty, the series has been made by another company called Treyarch who made Call of Duty 3 and Call of Duty: World At War. Their games are nowhere near as good as Infinity Ward's, but Activision loves making money on people who don't know any better. CoD4:2 had an obvious amount of hype surrounding it, which was realistically all deserved.

The single-player campaign is as short as you have heard: about six hours on normal difficulty. This is not a bad thing. It has some epically intense moments, including the ridiculously stressful and awesome crescendo of the game. The landmarks of the game do include some pretty grotesque scenes, including the "terrorist level" that you have to kill an airport full of civilians, but those traumatized by certain events do have the option of skipping out of them. The story of Infinity Ward's games have always been spectacular, but I feel like they pushed it a bit far in this one. It was just on the other side of realistic, where there stories have always had to do with World War II history in the past or with Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare it was a super-realistic look at the world's battle against terrorism. Modern Warfare 2 has set-pieces that make your jaw drop to the floor, but when everything comes together it seems less genuine than some of their other storylines. The campaign mode, still, has a lot of replay value--especially on the higher difficulties.

Infinity Ward's answer to Activision putting zombie levels in Saint's Row 2 and Call of Duty: World at War was the new Special Ops mode, which is twenty-three co-op or single-player missions using set-pieces from the Modern Warfare games. Each mission has a possibility of three-star ranks, depending on the difficulty level or how well you do in the mission. Unlocking stars unlocks new Special Ops missions and it's like that. It's actually a very fun mode to just poke around with, and the story is just as simple as "Complete objective" which is usually "Kill people and run your stupid ass to the end."

The multiplayer is new and improved, but I unfortunately have very little to say about it. I don't play a lot of multiplayer, but from those that I've heard from it's amazing Xbox Live didn't crash after all the people swarming online to play it. The killstreaks are easier and they've added a new deathstreak feature, where you can get perks from dying a certain number of times so you can recover from utter defeat if you know how. Most people bought the game for this function, but if you did then you already know that Call of Duty multiplayer has always been some of the best and you already know that you'll like it.

The soundtrack was done by Hans Zimmer. For those who are unfamiliar: Pirates of the Caribbean, The Dark Knight, The Last Samurai, Gladiator, do I need to go on? Saying this soundtrack is epic doesn't do it justice. The score forces you to play the game--it drives you through the blood-spattered screen. It is among the most impressive music in an action game and I really can't stress that enough.

Despite Activision's constant douchebaggery, the game is worth every penny. Between single-player story that blows the mind, Special Op co-op missions, and multiplayer, this game is good for every gaming mood you happen to be in--unless you want something less shooty and something more stabby or role-playing-y. As was a possibility, this may have beaten Brütal Legend as far as my game of the year goes. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 builds on the perfection that Infinity Ward made with first-person shooters with the first Modern Warfare. The game is win. Don't let it get away.

-Evan "Dez" O'Connor

Hithchiker's Guide to the Apocalypse

2009-11-13T12:00:00.009-05:00

The new update schedule is going to go something like this: music reviews will be posted on Tuesdays; video game reviews will be posted on Wednesdays; movie reviews will be posted on Fridays; and UFC, concerts, live events, other random things I just want to review will be posted on Saturday. Reviews will be posted at noon on each of the days. They will not be posted every day or every week, but it is a loose schedule of each type of review. This just saves the worry of me getting clogged up with work and there not being any posts for two months like last time.

For veteran readers, it is already known that I am an enjoyer of horror movies. What you may not know because I don't remember if I mentioned it is that I particularly enjoy zombie-themed horror. Oddly enough, however, I prefer Silent Hill to Resident Evil and I hated the second and third movies. This zombie movie may be one of the better movies I've seen produced in 2009, but that may be because everything else I've seen besides District 9 has been complete garbage. This, like Brütal Legend for video games, may be my movie of the year.

Zombieland (2009) is the highest grossing zombie film in history. Hot damn. It has Woody Harrelson, who is pure badass; it has a Jesse Eisenberg who's trying to be an age-appropriate Michael Cera; Abigail Breslin, who was cuter than hell in Little Miss Sunshine, is a little badass herself; and then someone named Emma Stone whose work I'm not altogether familiar with. It's written by a guy who did stuff for Spike TV and then comedies for MTV. It was directed by a guy who has literally done nothing before hand. It could have been a disaster, or it could be the highest grossing zombie film in history.

This film has the ultimate winning combination of dry humor, over-the-top humor, sage-like advice, depressing moments, pure badass, and naive cuteness along with the writing of someone who apparently know how all of these get put together and a director who knows how to make it look absolutely amazing on screen. The shaky-cam directing really works for Zombieland, and the writing explains the epic zombie incursion by way of sketchy hamburger. Realistic? Maybe. I know a guy who went blind from eating a bad burger--no joke. Funny? Pretty much, yeah. Innocuous dangers are always amusing. Scary? You bet your ass. I like hamburgers. This is about as close as you're going to get for a Left 4 Dead movie you're ever going to get.

Acting, again, is perfect for every mood of the film. The cast, plus the unbelievable cameos, all rock the hell out of this movie. Even after the film, Woody Harrelson attacked a guy in an airport saying he was still in character and thought it was a zombie. Or he was just high. He likes hanging out on the cover of High Times, or so I hear. Badass. Or stoned. Whatever. Mr. BM (not spoiling a cameo, not matter what) does what he does best and amazes the hell out of comedy-watching audiences. Jesse Eisenberg really is a poor man's Michael Cera, but he does a good job with it. Abigail Breslin rocks the part of angry twelve-year-old with a gun, but I found the acting of Emma Stone as her "sister" is a little weak--but not weak enough to draw away from the qualities of this movie.

The movie could have been a summer blockbuster, but the reasons for the October release is obvious, what with Halloween and all. Absolutely worth seeing in theaters, buying it on Blu-ray, and seeing the musical if they ever make one. Unless something dethrones it, I foresee this as my movie of the year. After seeing this movie, you will learn who you gonna call.

-Evan "Dez" O'Connor

When Mars Attacks

2009-11-11T12:00:00.006-05:00

My job as a keyholder at a video game store has certain perks. Any game that we get used I'm allowed to try to for free for a few days, I'm pretty much the first in line at midnight releases, and I have access to demos and betas that we get for pre-orders. One such that was for a game that I, admittedly, had no real interest in but had to try to the demo for the sheer fact that it's so sought after.

God of War III E3 Demo (PlayStation 3) is something that you think someone like me should be interested in, but I found the first two kind of lacking in staying power. As impressive as they were, I found them pretty short and had too many frustrating puzzles like the goddamn fire one in God of War II which cut down on my desire to play through them again. But I got the demo, and I figured it was worth a play.

The demo is as sick as you think it would be. The graphics are fantastic--real lighting and fire graphics out of the Blades of Chaos, so you can actually light up a dark hallway with them. The gore is just as over-the-top as always, and does not disappoint for a second. The only spoiler I will mention: you eviscerate a centaur. There appears to be a new gameplay mechanic involved with jumping from stabbed harpy to other stabbed harpy which handles kind of crappy and is a pain and another where finding secrets via the rumble of a Dualshock becomes necessary and I'm not sure how into that I am for a God of War game. It ends on an epic note, somehow perfect for the series and yet lame at the same time.

You can get the demo a number of ways: work for Sony, pre-order from Amazon.com, Game Crazy, or GameStop, buy the God of War Collection which is coming out for the PS3 in a week, or buy District 9 on Blu-ray in December. I would suggest both of those ways as that movie is gonna look crazy on Blu-ray and even I believe I'm going to invest in the collection, especially if the graphics are updated to the point God of War III is shaping up to look, because it looks fantastic. I love reasons to play my PlayStation 3, of which I do not nearly have enough of.

-Evan "Dez" O'Connor

Horn-abüse

2009-11-04T12:00:00.003-05:00

When there's an update on a Wednesday, it's going to be about a video game. That's the first rule of this new release format I just invented for the rebirth of the review blog.

I could not have cared less about this game during its production, despite being fans of the company that makes the game, the person who wrote the game, the person who voiced the lead character, and the subject matter. After realizing all of this and playing the demo, I kind of lost it and went nuts for this game.

Brütal Legend (Xbox 360/PlayStation 3) is the first game Tim Schafer has made in four years. Tim Schafer, other than being the founder of Double Fine Productions which has only released Psychonauts before Brütal Legend, is a former writer for LucasArts where he wrote the Monkey Island series, Day of the Tentacle, Full Throttle, and Grim Fandango. Well, damn. With a list of games to your credit like that, why not buy anything he even looks at? Because he only releases two or three games a decade, it seems. Brütal Legend, his pièce de résistance, features Jack Black, tons of heavy metal, Ozzy Osbourne, Rob Halford, Lita Ford, Lemmy Kilmister, and did I mention the metal?

The story of the game is thus: the roadie to end all roadies works for this really awful band with the guy who did Invader Zim's voice on guitar, gets killed on stage and bleeds into his belt buckle which proceeds to come to life, kill the band, and Eddie Riggs (the previously mentioned roadie) wakes up in a church where there are monks trying to kill him with swords. Then the gameplay starts, but not without already instilling a great sense of humor. You are in a world of myth and metal, and must defeat the local wildlife and hemophiliacs. There are demons who work for a guy named Doviculus, and then there are glam/hair metal guys with a heavy metal Stewie Griffin character named Lionwhyte, and then a bunch of goth kids, and then back to the demon guys. The thought of returning you, Eddie, back to your world is dashed with a single "Pbbbbt" about twenty minutes into the game. The rest is too good to give away.

The gameplay is a cross between God of War, Fable II, and Grand Theft Auto III. It's hacky slashy fun, with different abilities (ie axe, guitar) mapped to different buttons that works pretty well, and you fly around at high speeds and crash into things with little to no damage to your car, only this time there's something other than Chatterbox to listen to. This time there's tons and tons of metal. About half-way through the game, you're introduced to a new battle mode--the Stage Battle. The first time you play it, it's pretty cool and fairly innovative. The second time you think, "Alright, I totally got this." By the third, fourth, fifth ones--the ones that dominate the last third or so of the game--it starts getting tiresome, old, and is reminiscent to real-time strategy games that I haven't been able to get into since Age of Empires II. This Stage Battle mode is also the only multiplayer mode. This is a giant looming black mark over the game, but is playable regardless. The "extra stuff" of the game is all the collection, hide and seek side quests, and find-the-hidden-item crap that is common in sandbox games, but Brütal Legend does it in a less offensive way by making them fairly easy to find and adding actual fun gameplay for reward for finding them. They mostly consist of unleash the metal dragons and kill the metal creatures.

For someone like myself, who can remember when he heard his first Ozzy Osbourne song and remembers the swell of metal within his chest, this game is an absolute must play. Brütal Legend is a legitimate contender for game of the year, as far as I'm concerned. The only things that can realistically change that is Borderlands, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, and possibly The Sabateur, but to be honest, none of them have the appeal they once did to me, save for CoD4:2. If you're into action adventure games, Tim Schafer, or metal at all, you are a fool to not buy and play this game to completion. It's a comedy/metal adventure that you'll never forget.

-Evan "Dez" O'Connor

Halloween Return

2009-10-31T12:00:00.015-04:00

In accordance to me having not posted anything in two months, I intend on returning with a more steady flow of aspiration as to not burn out. Perhaps ever week or two. I'll figure it out as I go along. Anyway...

I have a bunch of mini-reviews to gain fervor for my return, as I have done a great many things that I would like to review in the future, but figured snippits of some less noteworthy things still deserved merit.

The Time Traveler's Wife was a chick flick my girlfriend brought me to see as payment for bringing her to see District 9--which I am not reviewing because everyone and their dog has seen it and knows it's pretty much balls tight--and that I was vaguely interested in and I'm a naive Doctor Who fan who drools at the thought of time traveling. The acting was pretty good, but the writing was all off and while the directing had some decent shots, most of it was lackluster. If you want to see basically that same story but done way better, see the "Silence in the Library"/"Forest of the Dead" story from season four of Doctor Who. The only thing they missed was having Ron Livingston in it. On a personal level, I have a new girlfriend.

Dexter seasons 1-3 had been on my list of things to finish, and having seen all three seasons I believe each one was better than the last. The writing, directing, and acting are always spot on in the show and Michael C. Hall couldn't be a better fit to Dexter Morgan. The story grows with each season, and the character of Dexter follows real development. It's obvious at times that the series is based on novels with quirks in the writing or the presentation of something, but not too much and not too often. I can't wait to start watching season four.

Weeds seasons 1-5 was equally good as Dexter, but for slightly different reasons. The writing was, like Dexter, very well done. I prefer Brian Dannelly as a director, and the cast is stronger overall. Mary Louis-Parker and Hunter Parish were both amazing in Angels In America, and their performances in Weeds do not disappoint. Kevin Nealon is a favorite for his pure comedic value in the show. The progression as the show is the driving force of the plot, as opposed to Dexter's character-drive one. On my top three shows to follow.

No Hero by Warren Ellis is a comic book my ex-girlfriend got me into before we had started dating. Written by the same guy who wrote Crooked Little Vein, the comic is about a world where a league of super-heroes actually exists. They're not like Marvel or DC heroes, but rather in the 70s, there was a drugged formed that pretty much makes you trip out so bad it gives you super powers. Everyone gets different powers, but they are all strengthened to the point of immortality. The issue is, someone's found a way to kill them and they're throwing a fit. The art in it is really interesting, and the writing is very cool. The ending seemed like a giant disappointment to me, so I'm not sure how I can recommend the eight-issue comic, seeming as how it all builds to...blah. Just blah.

Other quick words:

Mass Effect DLC - Pinnacle Station (Xbox 360) is kind of dumb.

Left 4 Dead 2 Demo (Xbox 360) looks cooler than expected, but you're still paying full price on the exact same game.

BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger (Xbox 360/PlayStation 3) is a competent 2D fighter from the makers of Guilty Gear with a tricky control set-up. Worth it if you like 2D fighters.

Rock Band: The Beatles (Xbox 360/PlayStation 3/Wii) is a Rock Band game with lots of The Beatles, and yet somehow not enough. If you know you'll like it, it's worth it.

Dead Rising (Xbox 360) is a zombie sandbox I replayed and got the true ending for the first time. The story is laughable, but the game is still fun as hell.

Later on, according to a new schedule I will eventually make, there will be longer words on these, in no particular order:

Brütal Legend (Xbox 360/PlayStation 3)
Borderlands (Xbox 360/PlayStation 3)
The Darkness (Xbox 360/PlayStation 3)
Earthbound (Super Nintendo Entertainment System)
The Conduit (Wii)
The Big Lebowski (1998)
Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day (2009)

..among other things.

It's good to be back.

-Evan "Dez" O'Connor

Word to your Mothership

2009-08-05T17:22:00.002-04:00

So again Fallout 3 has supposedly come out with its last piece of downloadable content and again I have come to finish it in a day and subsequently review it. Let's not waste any time.

Mothership Zeta is the fifth DLC released for the Xbox 360 and will eventually be released on the PlayStation 3. Among the shortest contents released, the story of it is that you're released by hobby-horse-building aliens and must escape. Complete with finding and rescuing cryogenically frozen samurai, cowboys, astronauts, and Alaskan soldiers; exploding alien generators, and an outerspace dogfight. It was obviously pretty sick. My biggest complaint is that the Mothership Zeta is, at times, goddamn impossible to navigate the hallways. Some items are impossible to pick up except at a certain time when you're not even looking for it unless you checked the Fallout wiki before hand. Other than that, the add-on is short and sweet.

Being the shortest DLC with only about three hours of gameplay, it could be argued it's not worth the 800 Microsoft Points (ten dollars) but those people arguing that obviously don't know what they're talking about. What it may be worth to do is waiting until October when Fallout 3: Game of the Year Edition comes out with all the DLCs with it. I have spent a total of $110 on everything, where if I waited till October it would have been $60. Despite what everyone may think, it was totally worth it. For those who haven't picked it up, the GOTY is going to be a must-buy. Time to tell those mommies and daddies what you want for Christmas.

-Evan "Dez" O'Connor

The Pledge to Never Drink Again

2009-08-03T19:01:00.004-04:00

I know everyone's expecting my first/second day review on Fallout 3's latest expansion, Mothership Zeta, but I haven't been home and I don't have my Xbox. So wait two more days. What people are getting to get is a review on a movie that everyone has either seen or made their opinion of by now. I really wanted to see it if only for the reasons as it has an interesting premise, it was attention grabbing, and I liked one of the actors in it.

The Hangover (2009) came out this past June and became an instant hit and was being hailed as the summer comedy of 2009. It holds such distinctions of being the highest-grossing R-rated comedy ever, breaking the record held by Beverly Hills Cop for nearly twenty-five years. It had Mike Tyson in it. You have heard of this movie if you have not seen this movie if you have not seen this movie multiple times. It was a huge success. I am talking to myself in this review. But no matter--here is what I thought about it, starting with a basic assessment, per my three reasons for wanting to see it: it looked interesting, attention-grabbing, and it had a good actor in it.

Was The Hangover interesting? No. Not, it was not. The "We got drunk and forgot about everything we did; lets try to piece it all together" premise has been declared legally dead and, you sirs, have just committed a gross act of necrophilia. What you did was make it look interesting. Very good job of making the trailers look as such. It got you tons of money. But the movie itself was not all that interesting. But...

Was The Hangover attention-grabbing? Hell yes. Absoument. The unbelievable chaos that is created in the lives of the four friends in the movie is way more than a car wreck--wanting to look away while being unable. My girlfriend mused that it was like Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas with the scary stuff removed and being replaced with funny stuff; then it became 21. My feelings is that they read the Worst Case Scenario Survival Handbook: Las Vegas Edition and made a movie about it. Either way, it grabs you by your metaphorical testicles and forces you to endure it in its entirety.

For who I wanted to see in the movie, I was referring to Zach Galifinakis. I've been a fan of him since I was in high school and saw his Comedy Central thirty-minute special, and even when Eliza Dushku was talking to dead people (see Tru Calling). I was excited to see him get some decent work--especially such work that grosses ten times its budget. But was he in the right role? No, I don't think he was. The character of Alan was funny, and his style is even kind of matched with Galifinakis, but Galifinakis' style as to always be smart with an odd quirk or dozen, but all around an intelligent human being who occassionally does or says a dimwitted or awkward thing. His role of Alan matched the second part but lacked all the intelligence, saving for the part where he counts cards in black jack. It was the polar opposite of Zach, where he is smart most of the time and quirky less. He did what he could with the role, I guess.

The writing of Jon Lucas, Scott Moore, Todd Phillips, and Jeremy Garelick coupled with Phillips' directing made for a really good show. My problem is that I don't think I was set up properly for it. The movie was horrifying. I wanted to laugh, not be frightened. The things you see happening or about to happen, or narrowly missed is goddamn awful. They're already planning a sequel and I'm terrified to see what happens next time. All the claims that it's the highest-grossing R-rated comedy ever is a misnomer--this movie is up there with Funny Games in terms of horror in the way of is if these things were actually happening to you, you would be scared out of your skull. If only for the creepy Asian dude.

-Evan "Dez" O'Connor

Burseraceae

2009-07-31T11:34:00.003-04:00

As much as I like British television, the BBC doesn't appear to like me. Their exporting of television borders on the completely unreasonable. I watched Being Human and was all about to write a review on the pilot, but it turned out to not be the actual pilot, and the whole first season had already been aired in England. The Doctor Who Easter special just recently aired here in the states, even. But for once--one shining moment--we were allowed to see some British programing in the same month as the Brits.

Torchwood: Children of Earth (2009) is the third season of the Doctor Who anagramtastic spin-off, Torchwood. The show did something similar to Doctor Who while only having five episodes, but where The Doctor is technically still clinging to its season four title, jumble up the letters a bit and Torchwood is had a five-part mini-series for its entire third season and all the episodes were broadcasted on consecutive nights. The show is different from Doctor Who such that it is much darker with lots of death, brutality, cursing, sex, and homosexuality. After spinning off after Doct Who's second season, the show has tied into the show relatively closely, using occasional mentioning of The Doctor, and even has Martha Jones as a guest in several episodes in season two. The prior two seasons were good enough to be associated with its former show, and the third season--even at half the length of a normal season and only one continuous story--was looking pretty goddamn good.

The story of Children of Earth is that all the children in the world stop moving and speaking in unison, heralding the arrival of visitors from outer space. The remaining members of Torchwood, Captain Jack Harkness (John Barrowman), Gwen Cooper (Eve Myles), and Ianto Jones (Gareth David-Lloyd) begin to investigate the occurrence when The Hub--their base of operations--blows up at the hands of the British government. Oh, yeah, and the bomb was inside Jack Harkness. The story continues through the next four episodes with driving action and story, and I really don't want to spoil anything, but it is absolutely worth watching.

The writing of Russell T. Davies is even better than a lot of his work with Doctor Who, and Eyros Lyn's directing is just as good as his best Who work. The acting was everything you'd come to expect from Torchwood, especially on the part of the children. One of my biggest peeves is that children actors can ruin segments of a show, such as some scenes of another favorite of mine: Weeds. But the kids in Children of Earth did really well; they were believable in the way that they were being possessed one minute and joking about it and not seeing the seriousness of all of it the next. The acting of Barrowman, Myles, and David-Lloyd rocked. Some of the parts were very emotional and the characters experienced great loss and sacrifice--and everyone pulled it off sublimely. Bringing Torchwood from Cardiff to London was a change from the series, but the mini-series was a great way in which to do that.

Davies has said that season four is ready to go so long as BBC signs off on it, and they would be feels not to. The show has a lot of life left in it, as does its predecessor, Doctor Who. Series in this canon have proven they can withstand massive cast changes, and Torchwood is ready.

-Evan "Dez" O'Connor

Co-headline

2009-07-30T18:07:00.003-04:00

It's kind of clear that I review most of the same stuff over and over. Video games, movies, television, with an occasional review of a book or a restaurant. I try to be eclectic in my reviews, not always jerking off in the name of self-indulgence and actually talk about "new" and "interesting" things that people other than myself care about. With that in mind, I decided to write a review on two music albums that I find myself interested enough in to listen to that have been released in the last month.

Killswitch Engage II by Killswitch Engage (2009) is the second self-titled album by New England metalcore act, Killswitch Engage. To start, I need to bring up my personal biases by stating that I love Killswitch Engage. I've seen them live several times, hung out with Howard Jones (the singer of the group) worked many shows for them back when I worked for Roadrunner Records, and even have a line from one of their songs tattooed on my leg. So yeah; it's safe to say I'm a fan. Looking back, their first studio album, Alive or Just Breathing, and The End of Heartache were some of my favorite albums in high school, and As Daylight Dies rocked--but perhaps not as hard as the other two did.

Killswitch Engage II continued the unfortunate downfall set up for the music set up by 2006's release. From listening to the album for the better part of a month, it is very unimpressive. The writing and guitar work present in all their other work is severely understated, and the songs get downright repetitive. There are a few songs on the album that kick it up to something on par to what they usually do, but the songs are incredibly short. Some of the tracks on the new album are barely two and a half minutes long, which don't work with the slower pace of the songs present in this album. There are about two songs that stick in my head as being good, both of them very near the end of the album, and this is after trying very hard to find something about this album I liked.

Tri-Polar by the Sick Puppies (2009) is the Australian rock band's second major studio release, and again I love all that I had heard before from them. Dressed Up As Life was one of my favorite albums of 2007. So imagine my disappointment when another album from another band that I consider myself a fan of releases another (relatively) crap album two weeks after my favorite metalcore act.

This album does have a few more songs saving it from being all-around crap, but the first half of the album is near unlistenable if you're looking for the clever writing of their prior album. The vocals for the first half ot the album is also disagreeable--just shouting. Not screaming a la Killswitch Engage or Bleeding Through, and not the singing from the first album. It was just plain non-melodic shouting and that's not fun to listen to. The second half of the album is saved, and is more like the Sick Puppies of old. It's saved, but barely.

Both of these albums are good in their own rights. The problem I have is that neither of them meet up to the potential the bands have working for them, and it's clear in the music. This is why I rarely buy CDs anymore.

In news of upcoming reviews, it depends on how far I get in certain games, what movies or television I have time to watch, or books I spend time reading. I've been told my retro reviews are fun, so expect a review on one of my favorite video game series at some point, as well as some classic games I haven't played until recently. Pseudo-obscure movies are going to be big as always, and reviews of British mini-series and television pilots.

-Evan "Dez" O'Connor

Preyers

2009-07-21T21:32:00.002-04:00

Most everyone has that game that is "the reason" they bought a next-generation console. Some people got it launch for no reason, sure, but the rest of us needed a reason to cash-in on our PS2s for the Xbox 360. For me, it was two games: Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, and a crazy first-person shooter that my tattoo artist introduced me to in my first hands-on experience with a 360.

Prey (2006) was a game that was supposed to be released around the same time as Duke Nukem Forever, but OH SNAP Prey ended up coming out after all. Belonging to the vaporware headliners, 3D Realms, the game was in production since 1995, originally supposed to be for the Nintendo 64. The main character went through name changes, the soundtrack went from KMFDM to something less industrial, and the graphics became some of the best I've ever seen on the Xbox 360--especially dating back to 2006. The demo had the first two levels and a bunch of multiplayer levels. The main reason this wasn't released thirteen years ago as opposed to only three years ago was what the game engine needs: variable gravities, portals that Valve would have trouble sinking their teeth into, and reflections in mirrors and the aforementioned portals that reality can barely talk shit to.

The story of the game is thus: you are a prick Cherokee who wants your girlfriend to move away from the reservation. She, along with your traditional Native American grandfather, like being a Cherokee and want to stay. Before you can start arguing too much about whether or not Cherokee beliefs are crap or not, aliens abduct you, kill your grandfather, and you must embrace your Cherokee abilities in stepping outside of your body, coming back to life after death, and following your dead pet hawk's ghost around. The shooting is functional, in the way that enemies fall down when you shoot them. The rest of the gameplay--especially the groundbreaking ones--work really well with environmental puzzles usually involving you needing to flip the gravity in the room, go through a specific portal, or use your out-of-body experiences to walk through otherwise impenetrable forcefields and press a button to turn them off.

The plot of the game definitely keeps you coming back, and is nearly absent of the frustrating segments that make some shooters near unplayable. Your ability to not die is done by every time you do die, you have to shoot some flying things with a bow and arrow to build your life back up, and then you respawn exactly where you were. A good way to avoid frustration while keeping the mid-life spat short and engaging, but, like a hooker on a virgin, it does suck all the challenge out of the game out. The only challenge of the game exists before you get the ability to access the spirit world and come back to life after shooting the Disgraced Ancestor, at least on Cherokee difficulty because the only difference between the two settings is that the harder one doesn't have health pick-ups. The story claiming that we're a species of seed planted by alien races so they could feed seems a bit far-reaching for aliens. There are far easier ways to make food.

The multiplayer is under-played now, and never really set worlds on fire in the first place. The game is much like The Darkness with its slightly innovative ideas (gravity shifting in Prey, imp crazy in The Darkness) still were not beating Gears of War and Halo 3--there were no Prey clans. Forgoing this one tacked one aspect of what fills the title of "the game", it is one of the most under-appreciated gems in the world of first person shooters.

The game received better than average reviews at the time of its release and has gotten several review references in my personal favorite, Zero Punctuation, as a good game. I've bought some titles for only that: nothing, but random random game cases that pop up whenever Yahtzee spouts off the words "good game" (by the way, expect a review of Beyond Good and Evil for the PS2 coming soon). But this game has a super low price tag (as does Beyond Good and Evil--find out if it's worth it, in the future when I finish it and write a review) so it's only a couple of bucks to play a great game.

When I bought an Xbox 360 and my two choice games it cost me, after Target employee discounts and Best Buy Rewards, three hundred dollars. This included the Xbox 360 Pro back when it was $400, Prey when it was priced at $59.99, and Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Limited Edition was priced at $70. I got an awesome deal, even considering I've spent another hundred dollars on a new Elite and another four dollars on rebuying Prey after it became another casualty to the games that got traded in to something even more awesome, as I traded it towards Fallout 3. I was without the game for less than a year, and had to rebuy it--despite its flaws.

-Evan "Dez" O'Connor

Backspaced

2009-07-16T09:35:00.004-04:00

Growing up, I thought British television was kind of lame. I didn't understand all the jokes, the accents bugged me (as a pre-teen/teenage watcher of television), and the quality of film always looked about ten years behind anything America was making. Now, of course, I realized how I wrong I was--despite still cringing anytime Absolutely Fabulous is mentioned. From my previous reviews, you know that I at least watch an unhealthy amount of Doctor Who, and presumably Torchwood. Past that, the only mention of British film is Simon Pegg who I will watch nearly anything he's been in. Case and point:

Spaced (1999-2001) was the underappreciated sitcom belonging to Simon Pegg, Jessica Hynes, and Edgar Wright--two writer/actors, and a director. To preface, this is the most recent thing I've watched despite it being the thing that gave all of them their names in show business. BBC gave nothing to the show, wishing it would just go away. They had a crappy time-slot, crappy advertising, and even went on hiatus for over a year in between the two seasons of the show. The show didn't even come back until after it became a huge hit and BBC begged them to come back, singing their praises. Spaced deserved praises to begin with. It's a show about two near-strangers looking for a place to live and pretend to be a professional couple so they can get an apartment together to ward off the fight of homelessness. They move in with creepy landlady, sketchy artist, and some friends drop by from time to time. And, oh, there are pop culture references galore, making the show fun for anyone who has watched and enjoyed anything from the 90s.

My roommate says I should leave this review with "Spaced is awesome" and end it, but I like to think I am somewhat more legitimate than that so I have to write a full review. The writing of the show by Simon Pegg and Jessica Hynes is done superbly. The pop culture references, the comedy, and--highlight--the impromptu gunfight in season two, among other amazing sequences all make the show unstoppable to watch. Edgar Wright's directing is equally well-done, showing his roots for his films like Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz. The series is often shot like a film, and (in an unusual choice for a television show) only uses one camera. Even the electronic soundtrack, which usually bugs the hell out of me, fit really well with the show and the near-constant drug references.

The acting by the Brits is what you would expect from Simon Pegg and his ilk. Pegg plays the perfect comic book/video game nerd (trust me, I know). Hynes plays the over-talkative, naive, a tad unstable crazy chick to a tee. Nick Frost as the gun enthusiast who stole a tank and tried to invade Paris before getting side-tracked in EuroDisney is a stroke of genius by the writers, director, and the actor himself. Mark Heap as the sketchy artist adds so much to the dynamic, especially when Pegg and Frost corrupt him little by little. The landlady played by Julia Deakin adds another creepy vibe, but in a different way. The part of the uppity fashion designer played by Katy Carmichael is actually really irritating, and I'm actually glad her part was relatively small. Otherwise, the cast does nothing but good in the name of comedy.

The season starts perfect and continues on in crescendos and pointless episodes that are still super entertaining. The series finale, on the other hand, seems to be one of the weakest episodes of the series. A third season has been rumored since 2001, even eight years later. I almost hope they don't, only because reviving a show after so long with the same actors--who would all love to regroup--would lose a lot, considering they explained the year-long hiatus...how do you explain one for eight plus? For the DVD portion of the show, my favorite part of it has to be the Homage-o-meter, which works like subtitles, but instead of seeing what they're saying, it tells you what pop-culture reference they're making in every scene. The hefty price tag of the British import DVD is well worth it.

As a side note, if anyone can score me a copy of the god awful pilot for the American version, let me know. I have a morbid curiosity that must be quenched.

-Evan "Dez" O'Connor

UFC 0b1100100

2009-07-12T17:46:00.005-04:00

I don't like sports, but I do love fighting. The Ultimate Fighting Championship is a massive favorite of mine, as one may be able to tell based on the fact I reviewed the demo for the game, the game, and the best live event of 2008 in the side bar was for the UFC pay-per-view with George St. Pierre vs Jon Fitch--which was awesome, save for Brock Lesnar's stupid ass sitting on Heath Herring for a fifteen minutes. But I'm biased against that stupid prick, myself.

UFC 100 was last night as the one hundredth large UFC since it started in the early 90s. The fight card last night was pretty deserving of this centennial event with two title matches, an Ultimate Fighter grudge fight, the long awaited UFC debut of Yoshihiro Akiymaya, and an undercard featuring fighters like Jon Fitch, Stephan Bonnar, Mark Coleman, Mac Danzig, Dong Hyun Kim, and CB Dollaway. I'm only going to review the fights that I saw, being the four main card fights.

First was Yoshihiro Akiymaya vs Alan Belcher. Akiymaya was my pick to win, with his impressive history outside of the UFC and his crazy Judo. That's not to say that I didn't respect Alan Belcher, who has a lot of really impressive fights in the UFC, but he has a really stupid tattoo of Johnny Cash that looks like Muhammad Ali after he ate a whole lot of cake. Akiymaya controlled most of the fight, getting some good take-downs, landing the heaviest shots if not the most. Belcher landed one nasty superman punch by propelling himself off the cage, and good knockdown or two, but mostly cuz he hit Akiymaya while he was off balance and he quickly recovered. Yoshihiro won a split decision which color commentator Joe Rogan said after the announcement, "Belcher just got robbed." I was sitting in a room full of about four people who follow UFC really closely and two or three people who dabbled from time to time, and we all thought that Akiymaya kicked ass and totally deserved to win the fight. The judges chose correctly as far as I could see, and Joe Rogan, Mike Goldberg, and Alan Belcher should all realize that. At least it wasn't Dan "Hendo" Henderson winning the split with Rich "Ace" Franklin, which he absolutely did not deserve.

Speaking of Hendo, the next fight was the Ultimate Fighter coaches' fight. Dan Henderson vs Michael Bisping. As someone who tends to miss the whole show until the day of the finale and watches the season-long marathon, I saw Bisping on the show and he was a prick. I was pretty sure he was a prick before the show too, but I know he's a good fighter. As well as I know how good he is, i also know that Henderson is better. it only took one SICK right hand in the second round for it to be proven. Bisping kept circling to the right, which is not what you want to do if you--for example--want to avoid getting hit with Dan Henderson's meaty right fist.

The next fight was the first championship bout of UFC Welterweight Champion George "Rush" St. Pierre vs Thiago "The Pitbull" Alves. Alves is the this stupid-good muay thai and has beaten legend Matt Hughes with it. GSP did what GSP has been doing since his win against Matt Hughes, if you don't count his BS loss to Matt Serra, and thats run clinics. He makes people feel like they're training as a white belt again--and by people, I mean cyborgs like BJ "The Prodigy" Penn. So Thiago didn't stand much of a chance, but managed to make it all five rounds to lose by unanimous decision.

The last match was the one I was dreading, because if the outcome I wanted didn't happen, I may have killed everyone I was with in a rabid fit of rage. The main event was for the Undisputed Heavyweight Championship Brock Lesnar and Frank Mir, which is also a rematch between the stupid freaking asshole's first loss. You can tell who I'm talking about. So I've been dreading this fight, because if Brock Lesnar didn't get a career-ending injury I would be disappointed. The amount of crap--no, allow me to rephrase--the amount of total fucking bullshit that Lesnar was spewing was insane: "He got lucky", "I gave him that leg lock", "He beat me from his back, how more backwards can you get." Now, as an MMA fan, and I'm sure the rest of you reading this will agree when I exclaim: ARRGHHHHHGABASTARDINTHEARRAGHHAH. Ending fights from his back is exactly what Frank Mir is famous for, and you would know that if you actually deserved to be in the UFC. Frank Mir broke Tim Sylvia's arm in three places and almost broke Lesnar's leg once before. Mir is also a muay thai fighter and can knock an ass out or two, as in that amazing display against Antonia Rodrigo Nogueira. Lesnar still thinks he's getting paid to be a heel like he was in the WWE, and I'm sure even a bit when he was in the Viking's because he SUCKED.

The fight starts, and Lesnar is cautious where Mir is very relaxed. The feel each other out, with Lesnar throwing a weak leg kick early, circling for a few minutes, and then taking down Mir and proceeded to sit on him, hold his wrists, and punch him in the face some. Mir seemed relatively unphased by the whole situation until about half way through mount. The round proceeded as such until the horn, in typical Lesnar-is-boring-as-fuck fashion. The second round starts where Lesnar knocks Mir down, but then lets him back up. They exchange a bit, both kitting some alright shots, and a couple nice knees by Mir. Lesnar's foolproof "I'ma sit on you like an elephant" strategy goes back into effect with Mir almost pulling a recovery off and ends with Lesnar punching him in the face until it breaks, and then beating him in the back of the head nine times before the ref stops--no points deducted for blatently breaking a rule several times or being stood up. The crowd boos, because they know Lesnar sucks and doesn't deserve to be in the UFC. So what does our champion do? Runs around the ring, giving everyone the finger. His post-fight is retarded, saying something about sleeping with his wife and hoping we all hate him. Well, fission mucking accomplished.

That is no way for a champion to act. Furthermore, Lesnar is a slap in the face of everything that mixed martial arts is as sports entertainment. We want to be entertained. We want to have fun. We want to see people with skill achieving their goals. People who are larger, stronger, but still completely inert in talent are not fun to watch. It sucks a whole lot, even. Why see someone sitting down while another person struggles and the ref doesn't stand it up like he should when you could see technique and years of training of moving, trying to get up or get the submission or get the dominant position? I was three and one for my predictions for the night, which is a decent night for me. But Brock Lesnar is a fat-ass punk who doesn't deserve to be in the UFC, and I won't be happy until he's gone. And just because I know you're wondering, yeah, I would say that too his face and then laugh to know that if he's actually stupid enough to hit me, he will lose his entire career for it.

-Evan "Dez" O'Connor

Transfigurmorphs

2009-06-27T08:51:00.002-04:00

What's this? This guy on the review page is reviewing something new and happening and hip and it's all out by opening weekend. This is normally a good thing, but I am in a piss-poor mood, so hold onto your stupid little hat, Michael Bay.

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is the sequel to the 2007 Transformers movie featuring Shia LaBeouf, Megan Fox, and a bunch of robots turning into things. To be straightforward, I loved the first one. I thought the soundtrack was good, the directing was good, the writing was good, the acting was good, and the action was tight. I've had arguments with people as to just how good the first movie is, and I stand by that it is still one of the best movies of 2007. I went to see it several times in theaters and enjoy watching it even now. The second movie is not any of these things. I went to go see it for a friends birthday, and I can honestly say I will almost never watch this again.

Michael Bay directed the first film, and it was really good. So tell me, Mr. Bay, why did you feel it necessary to spin the camera around and around and around and then change direction and make it go around and around to the point that several people in my party nearly got sick? If you were trying to portray chaos in the scenes where the the two new-to-college kids tried to say "I love you" you overshot it as if you were using a goddamn railgun--which I must say, putting that in the movie was pretty much the best thing about it. Plus, the way you shot the giant robot fight sequences was good. Why is it now close-up-shots-of-metal-swinging-around-so-you-can't-tell-what-the-hell-is-going-on until the end where--I get it, it's suspenseful--slow-motion moves are done when they could have been there the whole damn time and made it a whole lot easier to watch.

Robert Orci and Alex Kurtzman wrote the first movie, and it was funny, compelling and good. I'm going to guess the addition to the writers, Ehren Kruger suffers from a major brain deformity because the writing was so goddamn bad the only explanation is that they felt sorry for him, and put all his ideas in the script. Hillbilly robots? Are you kidding me? A little sass-mouth Decepticon, a hot girl that's a Decepticon, main characters dying and coming back to life--ARE YOU SERIOUS?! This is all very, very bad of you, sirs.

There isn't a whole lot else to say about the movie. The acting was diminished because of the bad writing. The soundtrack was more or less the same, which isn't abd but it's very lazy--try changing it up a bit. The best line in the film was "He went to find you a tighter shirt." In an action movie. Yeah.

Do not go see this movie unless all you want to see is explosions and you have no taste for actual film. And if you care about me at all, you'll stop Michael Bay from making a third one, which I was told he can't do anyway because he already had a bit where a Decepticon throws an American flag to the ground.

-Evan "Dez" O'Connor

Decreased Resale

2009-06-25T12:00:00.002-04:00

I appear to be reviewing old movies, apparently, because I have another one for you. This one is another science fiction-y thing, but with different expectations of it. Early 90s again, but the budget was a bit higher for this one. Some more big names in this one, but nothing like John Leguizamo. So here it is, the latest movie review written two goddamn days in advanced because I have so many of these.

Total Recall (1990) is a science fiction action film with Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sharon Stone and even if y0ou haven't seen this movie, you know how it ends even if all you have to base on it is your feeble knowledge of Schwarzenegger movies. The film was based on a Philip K. Dick novel by the name of We Can Remember It For You Wholesale, which was marketed and the title shortened to the easier to remember and say title of Total Recall. Funny story, it was also what was supposed to be Total Recall 2 ended up being the Tom Cruise movie Minority Report.

The movie was filmed by director Paul Verhoeven, who was also the director of RoboCop and Starship Troopers, so he knows his mindless action movies. The writers, Ronald Shusett, Dan O'Bannon, Jon Povill, and Gary Goldman had films such as Alien, Star Trek, and Big Trouble in Little China. We'll try and forget that Goldman also wrote Navy SEALS. The team for the film did a great job, especially with the tacky 90s suspense music. Having seen the movies so many times, I still can't figure out whether its comedy is intended, especially the stupid-funny comedies that one of the writers contributed to our society, but it is good all the same.

The movie involves Mars, an oppressive government, and erased memories and Arnold Schwarzenegger rewrites the famous Harrison Ford Telling People He Wants His Family Back to Arny in Arnold Schwarzenegger Telling People He Wants His Memory Back. His acting is about as good as it gets, with actors like Sharon Stone, Ronny Cox, and Michael Ironside chasing and manipulating him all the way. The story of the film is perfect for the actors and their abilities, if not the audience's attention.

Roger Ebert called it one of the most complex and visually interesting films of the time, and he doesn't like anything. The film won an academy award for special effects back when special effects weren't cool enough for most movies. Total Recall is a great movie, if you see Arnold's face and know to expect mindless heart-pumping action. This movie rules, as long as you don't expect anything intelligent (outside of the story, which probably confused most meat-heads of the time) for the next two hours.

-Evan "Dez" O'Connor

Bird song

2009-06-24T12:00:00.001-04:00

I haven't done enough music reviews here, and given how much music I listen to and the varied genres I go through, that seems a little odd. So here it goes, a review of the senior thesis of a Carnegie Mellon student.

The Things That Airplanes Do by Anna Vogelzang (2007) is someone I started talking to after I started the first-ever Dresden Dolls fan community online. Her music falls into a sound found somewhere between acoustic/piano and jazz with the themes usually centered around places she's been and the weather there and what she happened to be thinking or observing during those times. I have seen her play everywhere from cafes to churches, and she is goddamn talented. The Things That Airplanes Do is her second studio album after her first, Some Kind of Parade--which I loved--and her two live albums, Basics and Sounds--which I loved. As can be expected, when I found Miss Vogelzang's newest album on iTunes, I was looking to listening to it very much.

The first thing I noticed, from having been listening to her for about four years before the newest album was released, is that she's grown up a lot. Her vocal style is a lot more fluid and works a lot better with the music--not to say that her earlier work was bad, but this album seemed to be a lot more sophisticated. Opening with songs like Hexagon, Pittsburgh, and Philly give it a really, REALLY strong acoustic based open. July starts with a nice piano and then sparks up to a nice jazz beat. Family Band is one of my favorite tracks on the album, with simple vocals, delicate piano, and outstanding writing. The Kitchen has really great music and vocals for the centerpiece of the LP. The rest of the album gets a little weaker and less memorable, but they still give you a great feeling of relaxation and intrigue. This may even be my fault, for never being in the correct setting to really pay attention to the second half of the album, but the writing and music doesn't get weaker, just the attention you give to the songs. It's kind of like when you know what songs on an album you like, and after you know those songs, you just skip through the rest, even though they are also good songs.

Her writing is one of my favorite parts of her music, with songs like Hexagon, Pittsburgh, and especially Family Band. On top of writing the songs and signing, she also plays guitar and piano for her own songs. The other musical parts of the band are back-up players but as I have seen Anna live, I know she can play most any of these songs even without the accompaniment. That, and I can't find out who actually played on the album and I don't want to give credit to the wrong people--but fear not: you're all good at what you do too.

Anna Vogelzang is currently residing in Chicago, and if you ever have the chance to see her perform live I urge you greatly to do so. Her website is theanna.com, so go and check her tour dates. You will not be disappointed.

-Evan "Dez" O'Connor

Joint Hookup

2009-06-23T17:03:00.003-04:00

So, Bethesda announced a while ago that they weren't quite done making expansions for their post-apocalyptic role player, Fallout 3, and that the expansions were going to come out for the PlayStation 3 eventually. Today was the day that the first of the two DLC pieces they put together was released on Xbox Live, and like every other month this happens, I got it the first day, tested it for bugs, and then went about my merry way to more post-nuclear-war-torn US.

Point Lookout once again moves you away from the Capital Wasteland and instead of Alaska, Pittsburgh, or some hidden air force base in DC, we go to Point Lookout, Maryland. The landscape is very different, as all the DLC has offered with a different look at how different areas are dealing with life in an irradiated world, and appears to be a bit bigger than all the previous downloadable areas. The swampland has grown some weird fruits, made people grow in odd ways, and made it sound like a good idea to have your brain operated on. Despite the crazy people, the small settlement at the pier seemed harmless enough. Outside of the normal folks and ghouls around, the enemies in the swamp look like they came out Wes Craven's The Hills Have Eyes--very weird, and I'm not sure retard strength begins to cover it. Another thing is if you just picked up the game and downloaded the Point Lookout pack, do not go there right away. The creatures here are hard to kill even at level 30, with super good stats, Lincoln's Repeater, and infallible headshots. These baddies do not like going down.

The quest-line seemed a bit shorter than usual--and all the DLC quests have been a bit on the short side. Even the exploration achievement was a bit too easy to get as compared to what I was expecting when I first got to the area. But regardless, it still rocks to have more reason to play Fallout 3. And let me tell you, some of the things that happen will make you say "Double-you tee eff, Mate!" Definitely worth the playthrough, and maybe worth the revisit if you weren't as thorough with exploring as I was and you want to level boost with the good XP amount you get from killing deformed mutant people. The added items, such as the sick energy weapon at the end of the quest, is damn worth it too. One thing this seems to be missing is a few side-quests that the other packs had that made it necessary to go back to those areas at some point, but maybe I just wasn't paying attention.

All in all, if you have Fallout 3 and have the other expansions, just get this one already and look forward to Mothership Zeta.

-Evan "Dez" O'Connor

Soup-ier Cherio Hoes

2009-06-17T20:09:00.003-04:00

Sometimes I'll watch a really awful movie just because I haven't seen it and it has a reputation of being epically bad and I'm super bored and/or drunk. I recently had such a fit of boredom, after starting new files on near all of my PS2 games and watching 3 discs of Burn Notice on DVD. This movie is so profoundly stupid that I couldn't come up with a proper title of the post that's somehow making a clever joke of the film's title or plot. Movies based on video games tend towards the awful enough as recent adventures such as Hitman, Max Payne, Silent Hill, and the Resident Evil movies--and this is ignoring the movies that were based on games that had absolutely no plot that should be auctioned as a movie: Street Fighter, Dead or Alive, OneChanbara, and the upcoming Tekken movie. This film was one of the second films based on games with no discernible good entertaining ideas unless we're controlling the head-stomping.

Super Mario Bros (1993) aims to feed from the fan-base of the video game of the same name from 1985. There are two problems with this movie, before any technical issues are even mentioned. A: the fan-base mostly consists of little kids playing their first video game, or if you're looking for people to be buying the DVD, people who remember playing their first video game. The latter is somewhat possible with the fact that most gamers are nostalgic (aka suffer minor brain hemorrhages) when an classic title is mentioned. I'm guilty of it myself, as I almost paid $150 for Earthbound and the strategy guide before my girlfriend gave me the copy she's had since she was a kid. Anyway...B: the movie completely fails to hit anywhere close to the movie it's premised on. It takes place in a dystopian realm that mentions Mario characters. They explain the existence of dinosaurs and turtle-people by saying the meteor that crashed 65 million years ago created a parallel dimension that reptiles evolved into the intelligent species. Holy crap. Instead of Peach, Mario is enthralled in a Brooklyn chick name Daniella and the quest follows Luigi's interest in Daisy, and Daisy being a princess of the reptile realm. Or something.

Super Mario Bros. was written by the trio of Parker Bennett, Terry Runte, and Ed Solomon--no one's getting away from this movie blame-free. Ed Solomon was also the writer of both Bill and Ted movies, which should tell you there that we are in a lot of trouble and we wish to rethink our decision. Too late, gamerkids. The trio of directors didn't help any with Rocky Morton and Annabel Jankel--both music video directors--and Roland Joffe who hasn't done with anything worth a damn since.

The actors in the film really aren't half bad, so it's odd to see them in something like this. Bob Hoskins and John Leguizamo play Mario and Luigi, respectively, with Dennis Hopper playing King Koopa and Fiona Shaw playing his wife-thing, Lena. The rest of the cast made most of their careers as small-part extras, such as wife-of-sick-guy-on-House and parking-lot-attendant-from-Ferris-Bueler. The only other character that was really in anything was Fisher Stevens who played the Middle Eastern scientist from Short Circuit. Oh, it hurts me.

Nintendo, who usually holds onto their choices and properties in a death-grip, said in a time-line of the Mario series when mentioning the movie, "Yes, it happened. Let us speak no more of it." Later, in the Nintendo Power 20th anniversary issue, they say that the movie is a testament the the pop-culture impact the game series has had. Make up your minds. I personally vote we go Atari-style E.T. with this movie and game series. On a related note, Super Mario Galaxy 2 is a stupid idea.

-Evan "Dez" O'Connor

i'm FAMOUS

2009-06-16T20:42:00.004-04:00

As you may notice from reading here, I really don't have a lot to say about Sony properties. When I think about it it seems odd to me, if only because in my youth I was very against the Sega Dreamcast, GameCube and the Xbox in exchange for my PlayStation/PlayStation 2 fervor. My very first post here was my first impressions of two particular PlayStation 3 titles, and I have hardly mentioned it since. This is because, as mentioned in my second post here, that I tend to play games on the Xbox 360 unless it is a PlayStation 3 or Nintendo Wii exclusive. Here is one such PlayStation 3 exclusive that my manager received as a free gift from a game developer and she gave to me because she doesn't have a PlayStation 3.

inFAMOUS for the PlayStation 3 (2009) is a new super-hero sandbox by game developer Sucker Punch Production. You may know Sucker Punch from such games as the Sly Cooper series. inFAMOUS is the company's first game in four years, and it's kind of obvious as to why: it's a PlayStation 3 sandbox game, and it takes a whole room of people just to render the graphics of one of these hobos. But the game came out and I was utterly uninterested, even after playing the demo. Since I got a free copy--and instead of trading for another, better game--I decided to keep it and try it out for the sake of reviewing it for all of the fans I may or may not have reading this.

The story follows Cole McGrath, who is a bike messenger and is unlucky enough to have a package blow up in his hands but lucky enough to survive it and be granted to manipulate electricity in such a way that you can't step in water, hold guns, or make friends particularly easily. Everyone blames this explosion, which killed thousands of people in Empire City--an obvious New York skyline copier--on you. You start on a mission revolving around three big baddies, your friend Zeke, and your estranged love-interest Trish. You go through, fighting through three islands each inhabiting different gangs, and a morality system. The story is really good, and is actually affected by your moral choices. Things that hold true for evil route do not necessarily in the heroic road.

A historically common grudge of mine resurfaces in this game, that I haven't had to explain in a while: the enemy's aim is WAY too good. Their accuracy is that of the highest powered sniper rifle of the face of the planet, but their using automatic machine guns, rocket launchers, and miniguns. In the meantime, I'm scaling buildings, trying to find out where the hell I'm being shot from, and ultimately falling off the building for being too slow at both. And on the subject of climbing, why can't Cole climb chain link fences? The bitch from Velvet Assassin can climb chain link fences. Alex Mercer in Prototype, which is functionally the poor man's inFAMOUS, can climb them too so why can't electricity man? And on other gripes, what is with the soundtrack? The song playing during the credits is among the worst I've heard in a video game.

The good things about the game, other than the story, is the progression of powers. You start with relatively weak powers, but enough to excite you and keep you playing, and each of the other powers add to the excitement. The side quests of the game, which free up territories of the map and make enemies less frquent, are all repeating, but not in a way that gets boring or aggravating. The collecting of dead drop messages and "blast shards" are easy enough and entertaining, even if the "blast shard" collection can get a bit tiresome.

In the end, the game is just like every other sandbox--when it's over, it's totally over. There is less of a need to keep playing after the story is done than usual, unless you played the evil way and killed everyone and then you can just continue killing everyone, but that gets boring after a while. Collecting things, trying to level up by kicking people and then healing them and maybe fighting the odd enemy that happens to spawn nearby, and free running collecting trophies does not a fun post-game-play make.

-Evan "Dez" O'Connor

E3-PO

2009-06-15T12:26:00.004-04:00

As I am never embarrassed to admit, I am a nerd. As such, I pay a lot of attention to gaming news. A few weeks ago, one of the biggest events of the gaming year happened, and I just haven't had the chance to sort my thoughts on it to write a coherent review of what I thought were the good, the bad, and the ugly announcements of the year.

Electronic Entertainment Exo 2009 (E3) was the fifteenth expo held in the history of the event, after almost being destroyed a couple years ago due to the Electronic Software Association (ESA) Terror Squads trying to make the event a whole lot less fun. Historically, the announcements at E3 could be ranged from pants-creamingly awesome to so boring you'd need to take meth just to stay awake. With the history of Virtual Boy, Dreamcast, Xbox 360, Nintendo Wii, Metal Gear Solid one, two, Portable Ops, and four all being announced, as well as the spectacular melting of the first ever PlayStation 3 demo occurring since its inception all add to the spectacle of what was to be expected.

This year, some of the news struck me as really lackluster. Left 4 Dead 2, Crackdown 2, Halo: Reach...I mean, really? How is a sequel to the biggest zombie shooter of the year a big announcement? Crackdown was good, but as with most sandbox games, it lost its appeal once it had been finished once. That, and no one bought it unless they wanted to play the Halo 3 multiplayer beta. And another Halo game? What the hell. Ugh. Just ugh. Nintendo made a bunch of blah-like announcements as well, with a new Metroid, a new Super Mario Galaxy, a new Wii Fit, and other revitalizations of dead properties. Where's Mother 3, huh? And with the dead properties, who needs a new Final Fantasy online game for the PS3?

Big announcements that excited me were a bit rarer, but they were worth it. The first thing that made me jump for joy was Team ICO's announcement that they were supposed to announce last summer at the Tokyo Game Show, but put it off for a goddamn year! The Last Guardian looks absolutely amazing, though I do not imagine it being a huge seller on the PlayStation 3. While Ico and Shadow of the Colossus are undeniably some of the best titles for the PlayStation 2, they did not sell well because most gamers spend hundreds of dollars on systems only to play the latest Madden or the easiest shooter that makes them feel badass. Team ICO does not care for these people, and neither do I. The team is completely made up of people who do not work in video games, but rather artists. Sony had the idea to diversify their portfolio with this odd team, and they rock the hell out of the games-as-art ideal that I hold. For those who played Shadow of the Colossus, The Last Guardian was made on the idea that the relationship between Wander and Agro was something worth exploring and creating a game on, and the trailer looks fantastic, done in classic Team ICO fashion. I was so excited for this, I canceled my reserve on Saboteur to put it on this. As far as the computers at work are concerned, The Last Guardian should be out around April.

Microsoft did have one out-of-this world announcement with Project Natal. It is akin to the Wii Sensor Bar, but way better. You walk in the room, the system turns on, welcomes you by name, and one game by Lionhead Studios, Milo and Kate will recognize your emotions by your face and voice. To me, it will probably be way too expensive to consider buying, and talking to a virtual kid will get old kind of quickly, but just the fact that we have this kind of technology is goddamn sweet.

Other short but good announcements were things like Metal Gear Solid: Rising and Tatsunoko vs Capcom. Good games coming from good companies, especially the latter, which has gotten really good reviews over in Japan. New Metal Gear games are always good, I just don't have a PSP and can't get really excited for Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker.

A big flop of an announcement to me was the PSP GO. It has the potential to revolutionize the gaming industry, but it won't. It can't, really. People like selling their physical games for credit, as stores like GameStop prove. Amazon.com has instated a trade-in program, as other stores starting to sell used product. Taking away the physicality of games and making them all downloadable, it A: hurts the games that people already own that inevitably will have to be re-bought in order to play with the new system, and B: it will hurt sales on the older PSP models if games stop coming out for it and are only downloadable, especially since a lot of customers still don't practice downloading content on a regular basis. If they cancel the PSP 3000 production for the PSP GO, the Sony portable system will almost definitely crash and burn, such as the Virtual Boy.

E3 had some really good stuff, a lot of mediocre stuff, and some down-right bad ideas. But thats what sharing ideas is about: weeding out the crap.

-Evan "Dez" O'Connor

The Biches

2009-06-11T12:32:00.003-04:00

I used to work as a desk receptionist before I got my cushy job of working as a shift manager at a video game store and writing reviews for absolutely free and boy would I love it if someone decided to pay me for doing this. Anyway, working the desk job was super easy, as all I did was listen to music and deal with college students. The problem was there were two brand new shows that I really wanted to watch. One of which was The Black Donnellys, which I blame my lack of viewership on the completely preposterous cancellation as it is one of the best shows I have ever seen. The other show was an FX original, much like another one of my favorite shows, Rescue Me. I have recently gotten the two seasons of the show on DVD as gifts, and decided to review that while I pick away at inFAMOUS for the PlayStation 3.

The Riches (2007-2008) is a show about a family of Travelers, which basically mean they're Irish con-men and thieves pulling stunts across the country. It's two adults and their three children, starting when the mother is let out of a two-year stint in prison. The outline is basically them stealing from the family bank, running away, being party to running two rich people off the road, stealing their lives, trying to keep up the lie while avoiding being arrested, killed, or found out by the other Travelers, people who knew the people who's lives they stole, or by pretty much anyone ever. The couple they killed were Doug and Cherine Rich.

Eddie Izzard plays Wayne Malloy with Minnie Driver playing his wife Dahlia. Their three children are Noel Fisher playing Cael, Shannon Marie Woodward as Delilah (DiDi), and Aiden Mitchell as Sam. The ensemble cast is basically Todd Stashwick as cousin Dale who is pissed at the rest of the family for stealing, leaving, and not cutting him in, Margo Martindale as the "Rich's" neighbor Nina, and Gregg Henry as Hugh Panetta, who is "Doug Rich's" neighbor, boss, and eventual partner in the show. Everyone's acting is out of this world good. Eddie Izzard acts a lot in the same way as he does stand-up, which makes sense as he's a writer and producer for the show as well. Driver plays the drug-addicted-but-ashamed wife while living a life she doesn't want as opposed to the thieving and conning which got her arrested in the first place. The kids all have their personalities that don't quit, save for DiDi changing a lot towards the end of season two with her attitude towards sex. Dale is a sociopath, which also weens away a bit in season two, but it works with what's going on closer to the end.

The writing in the show is great. The Traveler terminology and vocabulary is very nice touch. The writing as a whole is very engaging and drawing the viewer in, if being a little predictable. The predictability is less hokey than, say, Seinfeld, but is instead really nerve-wracking. The show is an off-balance of 90% drama to about 10% comedy, but that seems to be deliberate, as Izzard has wanted to move to drama for a while. The show was canceled after its second season, which was done during the peak of the writer's strike with its short-sighted seven episodes. The whole series ran a whopping twenty episodes, which is really not good enough for such a show. The show ended with so many questions that needed to be answered--not as many as The Black Donnellys, but a lot.

There is good news for The Riches, however. Eddie Izzard said in an interview that he is working on a script for a movie to tie up all the loose ends and to pick up right where it left off. The problem I see with that is that the film won't pick up a lot of box office success unless the people going to see it saw the television series--which is very difficult to pick up in the middle considering how convoluted the story can be with all the things carrying over. Also, the place they left off is a very awkward place to try to wrap it all up in two hours or less. It would not work as Firefly's Serenity--it couldn't--despite how much one would like it to be.

The show is absolute worth watching. It may not be worth the fifty-some-odd dollars it may cost to buy the two seasons on DVD, but it is definitely worth checking out on iTunes or Hulu or something. The acting, writing, and really nice story all lend themselves to each other and should not have been canceled. FX assholes better not cancel Rescue Me, or you bitches are dead to me.

-Evan "Dez" O'Connor

What is that, velvet?

2009-06-05T14:45:00.002-04:00

Renting games from work sometimes isn't as easy as it sounds. There are games I want to play, but we need to wait until we get a used copy before we're allowed to actually try it. And then, when we get a high-demand title, we have to wait for a second copy, and then if I'm really into a game, say, UFC 2009: Undisputed, then it's hard to motivate myself to try something new. But when I get so fed up with the same ground-and-pound/submission filled minutes, I need something new, even if I fear it will suck.

Velvet Assassin (2009) is developed by SouthPeak, who in recent memory have developed some of the worst games around. Two Worlds, X-Blades, and Legendary--the only game with an original story being the last listed, as the first two were complete and horribly done rip-offs of Oblivion and God of War respectively. I figured Velvet Assassin was a preemptive rip-off of the upcoming Saboteur, which is an artsy World War II stealth action game, just as Velvet Assassin is. Upon playing it, however, it is actually closer to a rip off of Hitman: Blood Money.

Now let me say, the Hitman series is one of my favorites, as you can do whatever you want in regards to stealth or going in guns a-blazing. Velvet Assassin does not let you do this, which is fine for me, because since playing Metal Gear Solid 4 so many times, I've gotten accustomed to restarting the checkpoint every time I'm spotted, but I can imagine this is not what some people want. But what everyone wants doesn't concern me.

The story is as follows: you play British assassin Violette Summer in a hospital as you have memories of some of your best throat-slitting moments, a la Agent 47 being all deadified and coming back in wakeful gun-fire at the end. Where Hitman lets you do pretty much what you want, you MUST be stealthy in Velvet Assassin, which makes the mandatory shotgun segments not make much sense. You can take very little damage, so a straight up gun fight usually leads to reloading. A lot of the gameplay is artificially lengthened making you go all the way back to the beginning just to get a combination for a safe.

All in all, the game was a lot more enjoyable than I thought it would be. The stealth was done pretty well, if a bit trial-and-error at times. The graphics are cool, as is the "oh crap" morphine button, that lets you fix whenever you get spotted by one--and only one--Nazi. What I found odd is that the Nazi's didn't seem to care for their fallen comrades until near the end, when they all of a sudden figured out they weren't just sleeping. But the game was fun, and I would consider playing more of it if I had it for longer.

-Evan "Dez" O'Connor

Who's on Fifth?

2009-06-04T19:54:00.004-04:00

My family travels a bit without me sometimes, because I'm in school, work, or otherwise can't be bothered to pack into a SUV with my parents and two younger siblings and they on occasion come back with tales of how I should have gone because relative X was so cute, or museum Y was so cool. During their most recent romp to Washington, D.C. they discovered a restaurant that "has the best burgers ever, omg." That's a hard sell to me, being someone who kind of enjoys beef. Then the chain opened up in Swampscott, a neighboring town in Salem, not too far over the border in a place I frequent for restaurants anyway, so I decided to check it out opening week.

Five Guys started in Arlington, Virginia in 1986, which gives it some staying power, at least. However, this did not sell it for me. When I got there, it was packed. Like, stupid packed. This may be because President Obama said something about how they're more or less awesome, or because it's been opening week. The line moved pretty fast, though.

Ordered the food, and then waited. The wait wasn't too long, and was accompanied by complimentary peanuts, which are kind of a bad munchy food--so much refuse for so little edibility. Anyway, then the order was up. And I'm happy to say that mine was the only burger of the party that actually was what I ordered. Everyone else got something completely different from what they had asked for. That kind of put of a buzz kill on the whole experience, as my friends and family were forced to go get their food fixed while I dined on my burger. Which was not "omg, best burger ever"--not even close. It was average. Better than any fast food joint, to be sure, but not worth all the hype.

I think working there would suck pretty hard, too. There were so many people behind the counter, preparing burgers, fries, hot dogs, and everything else, I actually saw a girl getting her eye bandaged for some injury I'm not even sure what it was, but I felt bad nonetheless. Behind the counter at a fast food joint should not be that busy, and I hope the girl gets a lot of money for an eye injury. I'm sure most of the people who I saw working won't be there past the month because they were mostly there to feed the huge crowds, but once they novelty of the new place dies down, they won't need so many people anymore.

In closing, this isn't a restaurant I will be frequenting, nor do I think I will ever really go there again. But why would you listen to me? Obama said it was good.

Your loyal Democrat:
-Evan "Dez" O'Connor

Kah-thoo-loo

2009-05-29T09:27:00.000-04:00

It should come as no surprise that I appreciate H.P. Lovecraft insofar as I've actually wanted to name a kitten Hastur, Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth is probably my personal favorite original Xbox game, and I enjoy the description of the midway boss fight of Dead Space (which I disliked immensely) being described as "being caught in a tumble dryer with a Shogoth" (-Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw c/o Zero Punctuation). So a number of years ago, I remember seeing a YouTube video which involved an oddly sexy looking Tori Spelling and the subject matter being turned into a feature film. While on one of my outings to the local Newbury Comics I found it on DVD, and despite being again hesitant to possibly buy drivel I found a way to watch it.

Cthulhu (2007) is loosely based on The Shadow Over Innsmouth by H.P. Lovecraft, which theoretically was based on my hometown of Gloucester, MA. The film was moved from New England to the Pacific Northwest, and instead of Innsmouth the town is called Rivermouth. The similarities between story and movie are a bit lost on me, as I have only read it once a pretty long time ago, but movies never hold true to the books accurately enough to please everyone. There were a lot of differences, to be sure, but I'm not sure if it effected my final opinion of the movie.

The main character is gay--something I'm sure they added to get some controversy or something. The main character's father is the leader of the Esoteric Order of Dagon, which is not necessarily the case in the story. There is a whole subplot of Tori Spelling trying to get this gay guy to knock her up to fulfill some rite of Dagon for the church or something. The biggest thing that irked me is that the Deep Ones weren't so much fish-frog men as the dead ancestors coming back from the sea. There were more differences, but, again, I don't think it impacted my opinion of it too greatly.

Directed and written by Dan Gildark with the help of Grant Cogswell, this seems to be their first effort in writing and directing or doing anything film related. For what it's worth, the directing was actually really good. There were dull moments, of course, but the movie as a whole was really well directed--to the point that I can't really say anything to critical about it as a whole. The writing was also pretty decent, despite some of the really bad actors who just did not know how to deliver lines they got to fill the smaller roles.

The main character is Russel Marsh as played by Jason Cottle who has a pretty uninspiring resume. Russel Marsh is called by his sister Dannie (Cara Buono) to tell him that his mother died and he has to go to the funeral. Dennis Kleinsmith who plays the father is like an American Patrick Stuart, which I enjoyed and definitely worked for the role of Priest of Dagon. Scott Green as Mike did a pretty good job, playing the straight love interest. Tori Spelling, as previously mentioned, plays a seductress who actually does a really good job despite that most days I think her face resembles a foot. Some of the actors though, like the estate lawyer and Dannie's husband were god awful and didn't belong on screen delivering even their very few lines.

Willy Greer did the music for Cthulhu, which was his first time composing for a film. The music worked really well with the film, as did the soundtrack of typical rock songs. The cinematography done by Sean Kirby added a lot of tension to the film as well, making it fit with Greer's compositions in an almost Sublime-esque way, without the killing the entire premise of the film a near hour before the ending.

The end of the film did feel a little weak for me, but at the same time it came off strong. I wasn't expecting anything worth savoring from this film, especially with first-timers taking some really important jobs and roles. Tori Spelling had the most full resume of anyone in the entire crew, and she was on 90210 because daddy wanted her to have a career. The movie honestly surprised me, and I'm glad I watched it. However, if you're looking for an accurate representation of The Shadow Over Innsmouth, you should probably just play Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth.

-Evan "Dez" O'Connor

I think the S stands for Something-kind-of-related-but-not-really

2009-05-28T12:00:00.009-04:00

When I was in Boston the other day, I went into the two Newbury Comic stores in the area, because I like the chain as a whole, mostly. Mostly for their selection of DVDs, as it is still the only place I've seen carry Doctor Who, but for music and comics as well. While perusing the DVDs, I came across something I wasn't expecting. A straight-to-DVD release that I was aware was in the works, but hadn't known it had actually come out. What's odd is my roommate had mentioned the movie the night before, so I found it odd that I had found it. I didn't buy it, hell no. But I did find a way of viewing it nonetheless.

S. Darko (2009) is the "sequel" to the 2001 film Donnie Darko. The first film was a huge success among the high school crowd that I was a part of, and I was admittedly a fan of it. In recent years, I've found watching it to be a chore and explaining it even moreso of one. I was the first of my friends to decipher the incredible backwards-ness of the film, so I figured the sequel of S. Darko wouldn't leave me with a headache. For shame, having such high expectations.

Richard Kelly, the writer/director of the first film, had literally nothing to do with this bastardized sequel in which Chris Fisher directs with Nathan Atkins' screenplay through Samantha Darko, Donnie's little sister and her desire to get the hell out of Virginia. She has met with some hippie chick in a car that doesn't work and they're trecking it cross-country.

It's obvious that both Nathan Atkins and Chris Fisher have seen and enjoyed Donnie Darko, but they understood it about as much as everyone else on the planet who can't figure out time travel (I am not among those people, apparently). There are so many continuity issues it hurts. Why does Samantha have the Philosophy of Time Travel book? When Donnie Darko ended, it went back to the beginning, before the teacher had given him the book. The teacher and Donnie were having a really animated discussion about time travel, due to Frank's probing in his sleep-walking state. The teacher was also very hesitant about giving Donnie that book, so it's not as if he would just hand it over to his little sister with no initiation from manipulated dead to ask someone about time travel. Nor would Donnie have drawn Frank's face on the inside of it, because he wouldn't have hallucinated about him. The new version of The Last Unicorn that Samantha wrote in the first film was a nice touch, but I'm willing to bet that was a complete accident. Not to mention that it was featured in a 20-minute segment of the film that could have been removed entirely and the only difference in the movie would have been 20-minutes shorter and would have made a tiny bit more sense.

If you completely ignore the fact that Donnie Darko's name is right below the title of the movie and associate it with him, I still can't really see any good qualities of this movie. The directing was mediocre at best, with some good stolen shots and angles from the first movie. The writing was decent, but nothing too inspiring. The acting was, again, decent, but nothing special. The soundtrack, which was one of the first film's highlights, was nothing in comparison. Michael Andrews' music for Donnie Darko was creepy and hypnotising. Ed Harcourt's work on S. Darko, which he stupidly admits he tried to base partly on Clint Mansell's Requiem for a Dream soundtrack missed the mark entirely, losing the surreal feelings and just adding stupid sounds over things--including the ever-popular suspense of strings that happens whenever someone is about to creep across something spectacularly predictable. The 1990's music a la the 1980s music from the first flops even harder where the 80s rock from Donnie Darko was such a good part of the film.

There are some elements of the film that were really added just to make people interested and confused that had no plot points, no resolution, and should have been left out entirely. There is one character who develops a rash from a meteorite for no reason. You see a tesseracte, and the guy starts freaking about it like it's all a part of his plan. Tesseractes were featured greatly in books and movie about time travel, but this has NOTHING to do with the original plot of the movie which they were obviously trying to borrow from so stringently.

Richard Kelly said straight out that he hadn't read the script, had no part of the sequel, and never would. Good on you, sir. Atkins and Fisher should be ashamed. Although, I'm not entirely sure you shouldn't be for producing a film about Tucker Max.

-Evan "Dez" O'Connor

The Two Possible Ends of the World

2009-05-27T10:00:00.002-04:00

I spent the day in Boston with my girlfriend yesterday. Apart from being goddamn exhausted from the train-switches from Revere to Harvard, walking around Harvard, walking to Newbury Street, walking to Downtown Crossing, going back to Harvard for dinner, and then making the subway trek back to Revere before driving my ass back to Salem, it was an entirely fantastical afternoon/evening. The evening, as mentioned, ended with dinner at a place that presumably stole their name from one of my favorite Robert Frost poems.

Fire and Ice is an "improvisational grill." This terminology worried me. Food should not be improv'd, unless you're lost in the woods or are really intoxicated and it's still only really acceptable if you're lost in the woods. But I was hungry, tired, and willing to try something new. A lot of my friends go there, but they tend to mention how it's a great place to go and drink yourself stupid, so I was never aware of the oddity of its serving practices.

The way things are done is you get a bowl and go through this buffet line. There are vegetables, meats, and all the fixin's for what you could want with it--and its all raw. The meat ranges from top sirloin to shark, pulled pork to bacon. There's cilantro, baby corn, carrots, potatoes, and salad pieces. Then, after strolling through the raw buffet, you pick your sauce, which is anything from spicy bourbon and barbecue and teriyaki to sweet and sour, thai, honey mustard. You get a little container of the sauce you want, or mix them if you're interested, and bring them to the giant grill top in the center of the restaurant. They cook all the food together, then add the sauce at the appropriate time, and then give it back to you and you eat it.

Now, there are flaws with the system, that since it is a buffet, all sorts of people are walking through the line of meats and picking some up, putting some back, and the idea of that sounds kind of gross. But the place itself was really atmospheric the food was really, really good. The red potato, top sirloin, pulled pork, and baby corn with a bit of bourbon sauce mixed with BBQ was near enough to the highlight of the entire day. And it's all-you-can-eat, so you can go up and fill another bowl of ingredients before paying the monstrous bill and leaving.

Ah, yes, the bill. This whole adventure costs $16.95 per person, plus the cost of a drink if you want one. I had gotten a Fire & Ice Tea, having wanted to drink from those Long Island lemons, and to be honest, it wasn't a very good Long Island Iced Tea. If I ever go back (which I would love to do, because the food really was awesome), I would do so on the college nights where for college students with a valid ID, the price is only $11.95. The full price meal, as good and interesting as the whole thing is, barely feels worth the near $20 price, because despite being all-you-can-eat, the bowls don't hold a lot of food, and it's all relatively filling food so you won't be going up more than two--maybe three times--if you're super hungry.

These places are popping up everywhere, it seems. The first one is in Cambridge (where I went), then some in Rhode Island, New York, Alabama, another one in Boston, California, and another one is on its way to Cali. If you find yourself near one and have a ton of money, I would seriously suggest taking the chance.

-Evan "Dez" O'Connor

Tandem Fighting Reviews

2009-05-24T15:39:00.006-04:00

I know I haven't updated a lot over the past month or two. I haven't had my chance to view/play/read/experience the things I've wanted to write about, so to make up for the lack of updates, I'm gonna review two games for you here.

So, while I was waiting for the inevitably awesome UFC 2009: Undisputed to come out, I needed to fill some of that custom-fighter-gaming need. As I work in a video game store, I had a lot to choose from. Being as I, in a former life, was very interested in wrestling and the games had entertained me as recently as two years ago, I decided to try out the new WWE game.

WWE Legends of Wrestlemania (2009) is the latest installment in the WWE franchise as made by THQ, which is funny, because it plays like the very first THQ wrestling game. The only buttons that do anything are the face buttons. The triggers, bumpers, and dual analog sticks do literally nothing special, as if I was playing this on the PlayStationOne again. Despite the antiquated control, the game was actually really fun. The importing of the roster of WWE Smackdown vs Raw 2009 (including the Create-A-Superstar) adds a lot to the game in the way of entertainment and gameplay to the story-absent game. The Relive, Rewrite, and Redefine matches were all really fun, as are the Legend Killer gauntlets. I didn't have the game long enough to play online, but I'm sure the constant quick-time events with potentially laggy connections would suck pretty hard. Oh, yeah. All the finishers, irish whips and chain moves are done via quick time events. They get super old, but work relatively well. The game has literally no replay value as far as I could tell, but thats just the way it is, I guess.

So, that game was super fast. I got all the Xbox 360 achievements for it in a day without even trying. Then all I had to do was wait for the UFC game to come out, which finally did and I played literally for a week straight.

UFC 2009 Undisputed (2009) was first written about here when I played the SICK demo. Since then, I would just play the demo when I got bored, waiting for the chance to play the full game. So, the game was released at midnight at my store so when I got home from work, I played until about 6am. I created a character and brought him straight through career, making an undefeated muay thai knee-throwing jui jitsu submitting middleweight. Sick. Then, I made a knockout-artist kickboxer/wrestler heavyweight with thirty-three wins and only one loss. After the career, I brought him online and knocked out sixteen people, then went to my middleweight and submitted seventeen people, only losing six times along the way. Assholes still find a way to drop out when they're losing, mostly by signing out of their profile or just turning off their Xbox when they're about to get tapped, which generally ruins the fun for everyone, but they're not super frequent from what I've noticed.

The aforementioned career mode is pretty fun, starting with creating the fighter you want to proceed in a relatively in depth create mode--one of those ones that takes forever to get good at, but easy enough for anyone to mess around with--then playing roughly thirty-five fights before being forced to retire. In between each fight, you have a certain number of weeks to spar, train, and attend special events. Then the fight occurs, followed by you winning or losing any number of ways and repeat. Training raises your strength, speed, and cardio and sparring gives you points to add to any of your lets say several stats which include all forms and positions of striking offense and defense, plus grappling, takedown, and submission offenses and defenses. You meet the top ranked fighters along the way, fight them, and move up the ladder until you get the championship of whatever weight-class you're in and then defend the belt until the end.

Which brings me to one of my gripes about the game. Weight classes. I was looking forward to beating the hell out of Brock Lesnar as BJ Penn, because I figured it would be funny and Lesnar deserves to get beat by someone 100 lbs less than him, but there are no catchweight fights. You can online fight in one given weight class at a time. Some of the fighters are in two weight classes, but that's not really the same. It's a little problem, but something they should fix as you can play in cross-weight-class fights in things like Fight Night.

They have a classic fights mode, which I honestly haven't played yet, but the basic premise is the same as the Relive matches in WWE Legends of Wrestlemania and you have to exactly recreate the outcome of the matches, which I can imagine will get a bit frustrating as I have on several occassions accidentally knocked someone out or been knocked out when I was going for a submission or decision--especially when you have to win by one particular submission, like a rear-naked choke in the Griffin vs Rua fight that you can only do from one position that doesn't usually yield an actual win, even with huge ranks in submission offense. But whatever, I'm sure those matches will be fun to play eventually.

In the long run, I enjoy both games, but have only kept UFC and intend to keep it and continue playing it until I grow so bored of it that I can never watch another UFC match or until the next one come out, making it my sports game to buy every year like a stupid ass lemming. In other words, I'll be keeping the game.

In an unrelated review, I have the best girlfriend ever. She gave me Earthbound for the SNES. I'm going to play and review it eventually, depending how long it takes me. Sweet deal.

-Evan "Dez" O'Connor

Fixed Steel

2009-05-15T16:20:00.001-04:00

It's that time again, where I need to write about Fallout 3 again. New downloadable content, exclusive to the Xbox 360, and I am so happy I didn't get it for the PS3 despite the better graphics. So here it was, Broken Steel, the DLC that came after the at-first-glitchy Pitt, which was glitchy itself, but it was Microsoft's fault--screw them. So the game came out proper, and here's the review, then.

Fallout 3 no longer has that ending where once you beat the game it's over, kaput, and done with. Now you wake you "Two Weeks Later" and start three more quests. Only three. Three quests hardly seems like enough to take out what was left of the Enclave, but it did add a lot to the game, including seeing Liberty Prime do his thing again, breaking into the Presidential Metro beneath the White House, going to an Air Force Base, and raising the level cap to thirty.

The higher level cap is damn good, considering how easy it was to get to twenty but there is a problem, at least for me. I have done all the quests. All the main quests, side quests, DLC quests. So, at the beginnings of level twenty-seven the only thing I have to do to raise my level to thirty is wander around, collect the few things I can turn in for XP and kill things. And, as said in my other Fallout 3 review, I like achievements so the fact I can't get the last three because I can't raise my level without painful HOURS of walking around aimlessly in the Wasteland and shooting everything that moves in the face is aggravating to me.

But that's a minor problem. I could easily start a new game and get there, or just let my roommate do it. The new finale to the game is pretty awesome, and leaves you with a really good karma ending depending on what you do. More DLC has not been announced, but it has been speculated so here's looking forward to that.

-Evan "Dez" O'Connor

Funny as in Hysterical as in Uncontrolable and Crazy

2009-05-04T10:41:00.004-04:00

There was a movie trailer a while back that, at least to me, looked pretty cool. It was about two white-clad maybe-brothers who bust into a family's house and torture them. This sounds really cool to me, as I like movies of this kind. Of course, I don't go see many movies in theaters so I forgot about it, and then last week when I was at the mall with my friends who randomly brought up this trailer, I got kind of obsessed with finding out what the hell it was called. Everyone thought I was talking about The Strangers. It wasn't, obviously. Finally, my friend Josh reminded me that Tim Roth was in it. With the help of IMDB, it was easy to find after that.

Funny Games (2008) is apparently a near shot-for-shot remake of an Austrian movie from 1997. Hell if I knew, I just thought the trailer was cool enough to blow $20 on the DVD. My new roommates had moved in that same day, so we grabbed some drinks and sat down to watch what has garnered some very good and very bad reviews. Now, we had all been familiar with the title through previews and thought that it looked like a dark comedy. When the box hailed it as a "The most terrifying movie I've ever seen!" (Peter Eisenman, ICON) we were a little confused. But whatever, we all like horror movies, and we were even flipping through the movie channels and watching the abortion that was Saw IV for a while, so we obviously can handle gore. We didn't get anything we expected.

Written and directed by Michael Haneke who also wrote and directed the original is the person to thank for this movie. It opens with a fantastically directed cut-to-cut sequence of a family playing a pretentious game of "Name That Classical Music Piece" right before your ears and eyes are raped by Naked City's Bonehead and the title and opening credits are blasted across the happy family's faces in blaring red letters. This is where the tension starts.

Not long after the family gets to their vacation home, two similar looking polite guys in sterile white shirts, gloves, and golf shorts start acting very oddly. And this is the part where I love what happens: the tension builds until someone takes a golf club to the kneecap--but you don't actually see the golf club making contact. Nor do you see any of the brutality throughout the whole movie (save for one spoiler-ific moment, so I'm not writing it, but it's balls-tight). As my new roommate Nick said, it's like the best porn you've ever seen that has absolutely no nudity.

There really isn't too much I can say about the movie without giving everything away, other than the fact that the gore is kept to an absolute minimum, the directing is fantastic, the writing can't be beat, and even the character who keeps addressing the audience adds to the tension. And my god--the tension! The tension is so uncomfortable to sit through it's near unbearable. It is terrifying to sit through, and yes--I would say that it kills a little piece of you to sit through it all. But it is amazing and you owe it to yourself if you're a fan of horror whatsoever.

-Evan "Dez" O'Connor

You Eff See De Mo

2009-04-18T18:52:00.003-04:00

I really didn't care for fighting games until recently outside the odd WWE game or two because I like the create-a-character section of it (wrestling as an entertainment form bores the hell out of me now that I'm no longer fifteen). But I started playing Soul Calibur IV and fell in love with the new Street Fighter but now is another WWE-ish (but way-the-hell better) fighting game that I scored a demo code to.

UFC 2009 Undisputed Demo codes were granted to people who pre-ordered it at GameStop, and I love swag. So, in preparation for my UFC 97: Redemption shindig I have going on, I played the hell out of it. The demo is a lot like a Fight Night demo: tutorials and an exhibition option where you can play as one of two fighters and beat the hell out of the person you didn't pick. In this demo, it's Mauricio "Shogun" Rua and Chuck "The Iceman" Liddell--a fight that is actually happening TONIGHT. I was looking for a real reason to buy this game, and I think I just got it with this demo.

Firstly: the control. I was worried the controls wouldn't work very well, with the history of UFC games that came out. The controls are complicated, but work really well once you get the hang of it. The face buttons are kicks and punches. Heavier punches and kicks are done by pressing the left stick forward, as if leaning in to the punch. The D-Pad is used for taunting. Blocking is done with the right bumpers and triggers, bumper for face and trigger for body. To strike the head exclusively, press the left bumper. For the body, left trigger. To grapple in a clinch or on the ground, use the right stick. The most complicated part is how you have to do Skate-like flicks of the right stick to change position while on the ground, but they are easy to do once you watch the tutorial--something I didn't do until I had already played for about an hour. I would suggest doing the tutorial first.

Second: the fights. I was concerned the fights wouldn't make sense. Chuck Liddell sure as hell better not try to submit me, and if I can't throw a well-timed and well-placed superman punch right out the bell and knock some out there is some unrealistic issues to be dealt with. But what do you know, I could go a round and rock them (Fight Night slow time style), knock them down, knock them out, submit them (after I watched the tutorial) and even knocked out Rua with a single counter-kick to the head. I was so pleasantly surprised, it's almost unfair.

I fought several fights as both characters, knocking out, submitting, and being knocked out for a few hours and I didn't even get bored. The submitting is a bit difficult from what I can tell as I couldn't actually win in the first round with a submission, but I'm pretty sure it's actually harder to submit someone than it is to knock their teeth in. I am looking forward to the full game, the actual fights taking place tonight, and having my little party of fighting, beer, and video games. Word.

-Evan "Dez" O'Connor

The Desert of the Formerly Living

2009-04-12T18:43:00.003-04:00

Happy Easter, review-readers. I don't know about you, but I have been eagerly awaiting the latest Doctor Who Easter Special, and today I got my hands on it. I have recently been buying the seasons of DVDs for the series, opting to not have to rely on the internet and often-failing hard drive space I find myself owning as of late. It seems to be a good investment, despite the fact that British-import DVDs are about as cheap as you would expect Christ's frozen saliva to be: too goddamn much.

The Planet of the Dead is the latest of the specials to air in between season four and five of the relaunched Doctor Who series. Personally, I'm really hating the plan of having five specials as opposed to a full season, but I'm just complaining because I want more Doctor Who, goddamnit. This particular special, being on Easter, does make mention, but not nearly as much as the Christmas episodes tend to. It involves an antiquity thief, a London bus, a wormhole, and creatures that kind of look like the things from Pitch Black, but they're mostly in the light. Lots of sand, too. And dead things, apparently.

As with every special, it was written by Russell T Davies, this time with the help of Gareth Roberts--great for his episodes with Shakespeare and Agatha Christie. It was directed by James Strong, who also directed "The Impossible Planet"/"Satan Pit" arch as well as the balls-tight 2007 Christmas episode, "Voyage of the Damned". All in all, a fantastic team Davies had put together--only missing Steven Moffat as the undeniably best writer for the series so far. The team did a good job, especially the creepy piece of foreshadowing at the end (seriously, watch it only for that if you're a fan of the series), and the fact that it was shot in Dubai instead of on a sound stage definitely adds something to the episode.

New characters, such as Lee Evans' Dr. Malcolm Taylor and Michelle Ryan's Lady Christina de Souza add a lot to the episode and hopefully the series in the long run. I'm still pissed at the lack of River Song; how the hell did she recognize David Tennant as the Doctor in the "Silence in the Library"/"Forest of the Dead" arch? Tennant only has three or four episodes left, so what the hell? The series has been pretty good with continuity, don't mess it up now. Tennant's acting in this episode, oddly enough, did not seem up to par as to how he has been for the past three years. This may be from over-stretching his acting on the Shakespearean stage and his life-long love for the role of The Doctor, so I'm not jumping to hang him quite yet for it.

As with last time, all I want to do now is wait until the next episode comes out so I can rant about Doctor Who some more. These specials are far too spread out to give any semblance or meaning--or so I thought, until the eerie foreshadowing at the end of "Planet of the Dead". As a hint, it is (partly) a repeat of something one of the Ood said in "Planet of the Ood", and someone who has been reported to be coming back in the next special, "The Waters of Mars." In short: Give me more Doctor Who!

-Evan "Dez" O'Connor

Kegel Rock

2009-04-11T11:20:00.001-04:00

For the first time in what seems like forever, I am finally in a romantic relationship. This is awesome, for a lot of reasons--the best being the story behind it. Foxglove (the girl) and I pulled a relatively poorly thought out April Fool's joke where we were going to pretend I had gotten her pregnant after an intoxicated night of foolishness, and seeming as I am not a dickhead we would proceed in trying to be together and etc etc. It was not well received as it was horribly thought out, but now that the fallout is over everything seems to be okay now. While we were having "important talks" at my apartment, we would really just be chilling and watching my TV shows on DVD until we actually decided "Hey, this pretend dating thing is fun" and it turned into not-so-pretend dating.

Fraggle Rock is a Jim Henson program that ran from 1983 to 1987, so the series was actually over by the time I was born. It didn't stop it from being one of my favorite shows as a child or from eventually purchasing season one on DVD when I was eighteen (more seasons have since been released, but I haven't bought them--yet). Watching them again with clear eyes has been quite a treat, as I have recently aged to the number twenty-two and was able to do so in the company of someone who had never seen it before despite being only two years younger than me.

Fraggles are eighteen-inch tall humanoids with tails and fur with generally kind dispositions, with the exception of Marlon who has ideas of behavioral modifications. They live in a series of tunnels in a rock creatively named Fraggle Rock that apparently connects our real world to a magical world of giant, hairy, retarded creatures called Gorgs believe themselves to be the rulers of the universe despite the fact that there are only three of them and has trash heaps that sing and are apparently hailed as oracles (in the words of my brother upon seeing it for the first time: "Evan...the trash heap is singing...and I am unsure of things"). Fraggle Rock is also the home of Doozers, six-inch tall pudgy little people who like building things, which the Fraggles in turn eat because the structures are made of sugar or cocaine or something.

The premise of the series is that Uncle Traveling Matt has left into a journey for Outer Space (read: the real world) and sends his nephew Gobo postcards that he must retrieve from the room at the end of the tunnel, in habited by the only human character in the series, Doc--who also played a bartender with tourettes by the same name in the film Boondock Saints--and the "ferocious beast," his Muppet dog Sprocket. In every episode Gobo goes to the room, gets the postcard, and then has adventures with his friends that usually mirrors what's going on with Doc and his dog and the postcard is at times reminiscent of what's going on, but sometimes just reminds them of how hopeless it all is.

Each of the five main Fraggles, being Gobo, Mokey, Wembley, Boober, and Red have their own very distinctive personalities which make them believable as characters. Gobo is a skeptical leader-type; Mokey is a hippie chick; Wembley is indecisive to an infuriating degree; Boober--one of the most interesting characters--is paranoid, depressed, OCD about cleanliness, and has an overwhelming fear of everything; and Red is a stuck up bitch who thinks she's better than everyone else. For a kid's show, the characters are very well formed and even well introduced as the first few episodes makes very sure to focus on one person each time and reveal their personalities. Continuity are issues between episodes, albeit minor ones, and the continuity held within each episode is atypically well done.

Probably the most fun for watching the series again with someone who has never seen it is making up answers to her questions. "How did the tunnels get there?" "Uh, the Doozers built them" (which was awesome, because I was proven right in the next goddamn episode, hah). "Why are there only three Gorgs and they think they're the rulers of the universe?" "There was a great war between the Fraggles and the Gorgs, which is why the Fraggles fortified in the rock." It's all very silly and amusing to me.

I intend on continue my viewing of the series, and even see the new Fraggle Rock film coming out this year (!). In the future, when/if I ever have kids, they will be raised on Fraggle Rock, M*A*S*H, and--when they're old enough--Doctor Who.

-Evan "Dez" O'Connor

Geococcyx Records

2009-04-05T12:00:00.002-04:00

I am into music the same way I am into movies, if not more. If you've read my film reviews, you may notice I go very far to point out the director, the writer, all the actors, the company who published the film, and even the cinematographer just so I can talk about who did such an amazing job--or, alternatively, who owes me $10 and two hours of my life back. The same is true with music, though the only people responsible for the music on the album outside of the actual members of the band is the record label and (on occasion) the notable producer.

Roadrunner Records is one of those labels I've always been able to get behind. Starting as a US-to-Europe import label for metal bands in 1980, they have been one of my favorite labels for years now, something it at one time would have been in contention with Victory Records for if they didn't turn pussy on everyone and signed Hawthorne Heights. In fact, I was a crew member for Roadrunner Records for about two years, promoting shows and seeing some of my favorite acts for free for the cost of passing out some swag. Recently though, my love for Roadrunner has been fading a bit--though not enough to make me stop buying their records--and I feel like I should take issue with it first here.

When Roadrunner Records signed The Dresden Dolls, I was ecstatic. I had met Amanda and Brian at the WBCN River Rave in 2003 and went on to be the founder of the very first Dresden Dolls fan community on the web. I have since met both of them on several occasions and have even walked around my hometown of Gloucester, MA with Amanda Palmer, so while I would not go so far as to say that they are good friends of mine I do have an interest in their dealings. When The Dresden Dolls broke up, I was a saddened by it, I will admit, but at the same time, I was excited for Amanda Palmer's solo album. Now that it's been out for about a year and she is still touring on its success, she is growing tired of Roadrunner Records pushing her around and not letting her continue her artistic career--one that even I will admit does not really fit the Roadrunner image--the way she wants. Luckily, Amanda is a strong-willed woman and she does what she damn well wants with damn good reason, but Roadrunner is holding onto her and still holding her back. The contract she signed with the Dolls set up for a certain number of records to be released with the option to drop her after each. She has asked several times to be dropped (I believe she may have one more record to put out with them, but I could be mistaken) and they have met her requests with constant "no"s and not taking her seriously.

Now, I can appreciate from the company's point of view as to how losing a member of their roster is a bad thing, but Amanda constantly pisses them off by not following their request to re-cut the Leeds United video to show less of Amanda's stomach because she "looked fat", or by making a "commercially useless album" for a solo career. Not only that, but she isn't making them any money. Her only purpose to the label, as far as I can tell, is to draw the crowds they wouldn't be getting for all their metal acts. Amanda went so far as to write an entire song and perform it live about the tale of how she wants to be let go.

As far as their metal acts go, Roadrunner Records could not do any better: Killswitch Engage is one of my all time favorites, Slipknot, Cradle of Filth, Dragonforce, Black Stone Cherry, DevilDriver, Megadeth, Within Temptations. And that's not even mentioning the bands that aren't on the label anymore with 36 Crazyfists, Black Label Society, Coal Chamber, The Misfits, Spineshank, Visions of Disorder, Type O Negative, and other genres like Madina Lake and The Cult. Plus all the others I haven't heard or don't like--but someone out there has and does.

So, minus a few dickhead dealings, the label is pretty solid, and you can't really blame businessmen acting like businessmen.

-Evan "Dez" O'Connor

Wonky little shitbag

2009-03-29T22:00:00.007-04:00

Prior to my watching the wholly disappointing movie that was Sublime, I was talking to some of my friends about it and how it would supposedly kill parts of me I didn't know I had. One such friend said that description reminded her of a book that had a similar effect on her. I forgot about it, because my memory sucks like that, especially after the movie sucked so much ass. But one day, she comes into the call boards (I hang out with theater people as the resident English major), and she hands me the book. Last night, I was feeling particularly bored with Nick@Nite being delayed due to the Kid's Choice Awards, so I started to read.

Crooked Litte Vein by Warren Ellis is a first-person detective story written by a British comic book artist. The story follows Michael McGill who has been hired by the White House Chief of Staff to find a secret US Constitution that has the power to erase all the perversion from the country. He meets up with a little nympho college student, Trix, who becomes his assistant/ sidekick/fuck-buddy as they travel the country diving into some seriously fucked up stuff that--I will say now--definitely had the potential to kill me a little inside.

The writing was great, as far as I'm concerned. Very big on detail, funny quips, and he has so many ways to describe a way someone smiles it's almost unnerving. His dialog between characters is great, from McGill talking with a serial killer on a plane to his chapter-long back-and-forth with Trix. I had to remind myself I wasn't reading a Chuck Palahniuk novel, the style was very similar, But Ellis had one thing that Chuck never will, and thats the ability to be tragic. I mean, Chuck Palahniuk has tragic moments and all that, but they're bookended by sardonic nihilism which is his style and that's why I love him, but the tragic moments in this were amazing. As were the touching moments, and we mustn't forget the fact that I am literally convinced that Warren Ellis was writing about me. Mike McGill is called a shit magnet--someone who has all those big awful things that everyone experiences once in their lives happen to him all the goddamn time. He is the guy who falls for the girl who likes him, wants him, and sleeps with him, but won't stop being with everyone else either. And he reacts the same way I would! I mean, seriously, I literally kept reading to find out whether or not I die at the end.

The book didn't always follow proper grammar, but it was part of the style! There was one run-on sentence that literally went for about a page, explaining Boyfriend Things, but it was brilliant. The end of the book was a bit of a let-down for me. The writing still descriptive and engaging, but the style was lost. It picked up here and there, but the ending, while very clever and kind of unexpected, lacked the wit of the rest of the story. Except the last chapter, which was all of two paragraphs and funny as hell.

So, with the help of my friend and a two-year-old novel, I finally found something that killed a tiny little piece of me inside. Fuck that piece, who needs it? Besides, you know, people with hearts, feelings, love, or dreams.

-Evan "Dez" O'Connor

The Shitt

2009-03-26T20:41:00.006-04:00

As can be seen on the bar to the right and as I have mentioned, Metal Gear Solid 4 is my personal pick for best game of 2008. The stealth play was great and engaging, as were the first play-through where I decided guns solved the answers to all questions. A very--and I mean very--close runner up was Fallout 3. I loved The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion and the thought of Oblivion with guns and post-apocalyptic goodness excited me to no end. I waited countless hours at the local game store--not even my store, mind you--to get a pre-street dated copy as their shipments came sooner in the week, but later in the day. When Operation: Anchorage came out, I gobbled it up right before my 360 red-ringed. And now, the latest DLC has been released and re-released because of glitching and I couldn't wait to dive in.

The Pitt takes you out of the wastes of Washington DC and puts you in the rubble of Pittsburgh. As with Operation: Anchorage, the quest line is started with a radio signal you picked up via your PipBoy, which while it seems to repeat a few times, it is infinitely better than the Oblivion method of adding DLC quests by "A messenger brought you a deed to a place your long-lost relative left to you." But you find yourself at the very top of the map buying some slaves, taking their clothes, and then taking a train cart to Pittsburgh which is now known as The Pitt and posing as a slave so you can eventually find a cure for radiation poisoning. It all makes sense in the game, I swear.

The game is still fantastic, as always, and the new DLC shares all the good graphics, writing, humor, and style of the rest of the original Fallout 3. Length-wise, it only took me about five hours and I could have done it significantly sooner if I didn't spend so much time looking for all one hundred steel ingots. Speaking of which, I am the kind of gamer achievements were made for, but I hate collection achievements. Twenty bobbleheads was a pain enough, but one hundred steel ingots was just stupid and unfair, even though they were all in the same area. But anyway, the length of the DLC was a bit longer than Operation: Anchorage, but not by much, and it has the added benefit of being able to be returned to at any time throughout the game despite what ending you choose. And the scenery of Pittsburgh, while doesn't offer the vastness of the Capital Wasteland, does give an appreciated change. But, as with most games you've beaten the hell out of, once it's over, it's over.

The DLC is definitely worth the 800 Microsoft Points ($10), and I would suggest it to anyone who has the game and Xbox Live. Now I just wish I had some MS Points left over so I could download Don't Stop Believin' for Rock Band this coming week.

-Evan "Dez" O'Connor

Bo Burns Ham

2009-03-24T12:00:00.001-04:00

As previously stated, I spend a lot of time on the internet. When friends of mine also spend time here, we double our efficiency at finding and sharing ridiculous and funny things. About three years ago, I was shown a YouTube video by a friend who said he used to hang out with this kid's older brother. This kid was pretty funny, at least the first few times you listen to it. Come to find out, he's on Comedy Central now and has an EP on iTunes and a full-length album in stores. Of course, I knew this, because I follow it and I've seen the kid at the local Denny's.

Bo Burnham, the cleverly named album by Bo Burnham has four studio tracks book ending a live performance. The kid is like, eighteen and has the same agent as Drew Carey and Dave Chapelle, so he must be doing something right. All the guitar and piano is played by Bo himself and he sings and writes his own songs. On a whole, the album is amusing, but I per usual have some piss to drain out of it before I'm willing to accept that it's decent enough to listen to.

Every song (except for the untitled bonus track) has been somewhere on the internet or his EP Bo Fo' Sho. The studio tracks are pretty solid and not overly produced as All My Family was on the EP. The live tracks, while funny, have some issues that seriously need to be pointed out.

First issue was with his live performance of his Bo Fo Sho rap song with no background music. I understand how this may have to be done live if he isn't playing a keyboard with built in beats, but it was seriously lacking--especially when he paused every other line waiting for the laughs. Rap is quick-paced and something you need to pay attention to to hear all the words and all the quips. Pausing in the middle, while is tolerable in his other songs, just breaks the flow of his raps. And if he couldn't play the piano part of Bo Fo Sho, why was it there in I'm Bo Yo?

Songs like Love Is... and The Perfect Woman are too close in proximity, because they are both "love songs" but are still good songs. His comedic remarks in between songs is pretty snappy and funny if not wholly inappropriate but I think that's what he's going for. The "Dicks and vaginas are kind of like Coke and Pepsi..." one was good, as with his lead into Klan Kookout. Ending the show on A Love Ballad was kind of lame, as it's not really a great finish. Think of Stephen Lynch if he ended on Taxi Driver instead of If I Were Gay.

I bought the album on iTunes, so I missed out on the DVD that has his Comedy Central special along with all his YouTube videos, but the meat of the album is the music anyway. As a whole, the album is pretty decent and worth a listen as long as you're not subjecting yourself to it over and over trying to show all your friends who are just now hearing it for the first time.

-Evan "Dez" O'Connor

NEXT TIME (hopefully): Fallout 3: The Pitt

How to be an asshole

2009-03-21T14:44:00.005-04:00

This review every day thing is going to end soon, with spring break coming to a close and with school starting up, as with my job and and exams and all the crap that life regularly throws at me. Plus, I've been asked to write some tech reviews for The Silver Onion. But before I go back to the life of a student working as a shift manager at a game store, I'd write one last daily review on a film I wish I had seen before because Simon Pegg is one of my favorite actors.

How To Lose Friends & Alienate People (2008) is a film inspired by a memoir of the same name written by Toby Young. The memoir was about a real failure to succeed in magazine, as is the film was about a fictional failure peppered with romance, sex, drugs, and Simon Pegg being a douchebag. It also stars Kirstin Dunst as a love interest, Megan Fox as a sex interest, Jeff Bridges as the boss, Danny Huston as a prick, and Gillian Anderson as a bitch. The film was directed by an American, Robert B. Weide, which actually took me by surprise. The beginning had some really good and entirely stylistically British directing choices, with quick wipes, changing directions, blur, and other things found in other Simon Pegg films (Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz), and Snatch. After all the effort Weide put in to appear British, he quickly gave it up for a kind of uninspired typical directing job that can be found from turning on your every day sitcom or hospital drama--not that there's much different between them anymore.

The writing by Peter Straughan is a playwrite by trade, and it kind of shows. A lot of the lines were overwritten, too much emphasis on certain twists and they would have translated much better on stage as opposed to the screen. Other things about the writing were really good, but still a bit too over-the-top to make it really agreeable to watch. Simon Pegg is obviously a not nice person, with a title like How to Lose Friends and Alienate People--something I can obviously relate to--the cruelty and complete lack of respect for authority and personal space is still overly done. I consider myself quite the miscreant and find myself surrounded by people who would do the same, and even on our worst days when our filter is at its weakest those things would still not come out of our mouths.

I saw this movie because Simon Pegg is in it. I loved him in both the films he did with Edgar Wright, enjoyed Run Fatboy Run, even as the directorial debut from Ross of Friends, and he kicked ass as The Editor in an episode of Doctor Who. So, obviously I enjoyed his performance. Kirstin Dunst is someone else who I will typically enjoy, despite constantly being casted in the same role of "put-offish girl who wants nothing to do with guy until she realizes he's actually better in every way, etc etc." The rest of the acting was good, but what do you expect with that cast? Those are all very talented actors. Except Megan Fox. She's just good looking.

The soundtrack was maybe my favorite part of it, with The Kinks, the Scissor Sisters, Motorhead, and even a bit of La Dolce Vita. One of the funnier moments in the film involves Simon Pegg, a hermaphrodite, and Ace of Spades. Put it together.

The film to me was a rather large disappointment, as I really like Simon Pegg and it's sad to see him put something out that was so bad. The Sunday Times said How to Lose Friends & Alienate People "had more laughs than any British comedy to appear over the past decade." They're wrong. They're always going to be wrong. In Bruges had more laughs than that did and it wasn't even a comedy. Maybe they weren't around for Pegg's first two big movies, but they were way funnier than this piece of garbage. Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg need to team up again, damnit.

-Evan "Dez" O'Connor

PS - Don't take my opening bit as saying I won't be reviewing anymore. It just won't be at such a high frequency.
EO

Guild'd

2009-03-20T09:46:00.004-04:00

I live on the internet, mostly. I like reading internet comics (Penny Arcade being a favorite), watching YouTube videos, and posting on Facebook and LiveJournal and wherever people will listen to me. I've been recommended one particular internet sitcom by people I work with, family, and even Xbox Live Marketplace.

The Guild started as the brain child of actress Felicia Day who has been in nothing that I'm even aware of save for a few episodes of Buffy (blame my ex-girlfriend), an episode of House I haven't seen yet, and Dr. Horrible's Sing-a-long Blog that my little brother won't get off my ass about having not seen yet.

The show is in its second season with each episode running three to seven minutes in length. It features Felicia Day, Jeff Lewis, Amy Okuda, Sandeep Parikh, Vincent Caso, and Robin Thorsen as members of an unspecified MMORPG guild known as The Knights of Good run by Vork (Jeff Lewis). The show takes the main perspective of Codex as played by Felicia Day, and each episode starts with her recording her video blog. The first line of the whole series is laugh-out-loud funny, when Codex says, "I got fired from my job. My therapist...broke up with me." Of course, you find out that through the odd linguistic uses they appear to be using in the show that "broke up with" means that she was dropped as a patient, but it was still funny. All of her problems stem from her gaming addiction despite her desire for a normal life--something I'm sure a lot of us can relate to. The funny starts when her guild-mate Zaboo as played by Sandeep Parikh shows up at her doorstep and proceeds to make himself at home and moving forward in an imaginary romantic relationship he feels he has with Codex.

With each episode being less than ten minutes, there are obviously some episodes that are a little short on laughs. The jokes are hugely oriented towards MMO players or just gamers in general, so if you're not inclined to that kind of humor it will probably be a bit lost on you. The directing done by two no-name directors Jane Morgan and Greg Bensen is pretty good considering it's just an internet program. The acting of the gamers is different for everyone with the only really likable character being Codex. Vork is a loner tight-wad who runs the guild professionally, Tinkerballa as played by Amy Okuda is a huge bitch, Zaboo is a delusional socially awkward kid, Bladezz (Vincent Caso) is a horny asshole who steals the guild's gold and items, and Clara as played by Robin Thorsen is an awful inattentive mother. Then there's Codex, who is socially awkward and spends far too much time behind a computer, but longs for the real life and even tries bringing the guild together in the "material realm."

As a gamer, I appreciate the series and I even find myself eagerly awaiting the third season. However, I do hate MMORPGs and seeing the awkwardness I am so familiar in seeing in my friends on television softens the blow a bit. But the show really is a toss up whether you like it or not. My roommate plays a lot of games but thought the series was god awful and would roll his eyes when he saw me continue watching it. The humor is subjective and the story-lines are kind of silly, but the characters are very human and crazy and flawed which makes for a lot of funny. Plus, since all the episodes are on youtube, the official website, and free downloads on the Xbox Live Marketplace you owe it to yourself to check it out if even for the off chance that you might enjoy it.

-Evan "Dez" O'Connor

Ymagine

2009-03-18T15:54:00.004-04:00

At the top of this page, it can plainly be seen that this review blog/site/thing is meant to review all things. From movies, video games, and music to car shops other things I come across in life. Here is a critical review of a rather stupid choice made by a television network.

Again, someone has put a Y where it just doesn't belong. It didn't belong in "Kym" in Rachel Getting Married and it doesn't belong in Science Fiction either, unless you are describing something as "science fiction-y."

Sci Fi Channell announced the other day that they will be changing their brand name to "SyFy" in effort to dash away their association with "geeks and dysfunctional, antisocial boys in their basements with video games and stuff like that," says TV historian Tim Brooks. Um. What?

As a long-time viewer and fan of the network, I feel like I should be offended by this. I mean, I'm not, because I don't get offended that easily, but what the hell? You air Star Trek: Enterprise for Christ's sake, widely considered to be the worst Star Trek series--even by real Trek fans. You air Doctor Who, which I love, and you're going to tell me you're not Sci Fi even though you air some of the longest running science fiction series ever? Mr. Brooks also said "when people who say they don't like science fiction enjoy a film like Star Wars, they don't think it's science fiction; they think it's a good movie." These people are just as wrong as you, Timothy. It doesn't matter if they don't THINK it's science fiction; it just IS science fiction. Genres are not up to subjective interpretation. Would you listen to the The Ramones and decide they're heavy metal because you don't like punk music? If so, the X is in the corner. Press it.

SpikeTV airs a lot of "geeky" shows and movies. They air Star Wars once a month! They air lots of Star Trek series, as well as CSI which you can't tell me isn't geeky; it's all science. Spike has a lot of other stuff though, being "men's television" with shows about death and sex and UFC and all that jazz. Sci Fi has two regularly airing shows that don't qualify as science fiction: ECW and Ultimate Gamer--both of which are very geeky in their own rights.

What's worse is what Dave Howe, the company's president said when they polled their 18-34 demographic."When we tested this new name, the thing that we got back from our 18-to-34 techno-savvy crowd, which is quite a lot of our audience, is actually this is how you'd text it. It made us feel much cooler, much more cutting-edge, much more hip, which was kind of bang-on what we wanted to achieve communication-wise." You are not cooler because you made a mistake that happens to be what you wanted to achieve. SyFy is still a stupid spelling in texting just as it would be on television.

I'm probably the only person who gets pissed off at this type of thing, but I'm a writer. I've been writing for my whole life and I can't just turn off the part of me that flinches when I hear people speak incorrectly or can't bear to read manuscripts by people who have no grasp of grammar. I just can't do it.

What's more is this: I'm a nerd. And I'm okay with that. If I wasn't a nerd I wouldn't be throwing my opinions of pretty nerdy things on the internet. I remember when Sci Fi had a Doctor Who marathon about a month back, and when I got to school and told my friends about it, they went into a nerd-rage for having missed it. Nerds are the kinds of people you want being interested in your programming; most people won't lose any sleep about missing an episode, but nerds have so few things to get really into and those things are what keep us going. Of course, this is a huge generalization, but you get my idea.

You cannot take my language and the identity of so many away. Or you shouldn't, rather. You CAN do whatever you want, you uncool closet-geek bastards.

-Evan "Dez" O'Connor

The Faux Doctor

2009-03-17T11:53:00.003-04:00

Back to real reviews, where I'm not spewing fire or demons or curse words to try to illustrate my anger with a given title or situation. And a first! An episode of a television show!

The show is none other than the insanely long-running Doctor Who series which I have grown a love for. The first episode I ever saw was "The Doctor Dances" and I did not care for it. About a year later, I started from the beginning and "Doctor Dances" ended up being one of my favorites. Then I got to season two and I was angry that David Tennant wasn't Christopher Eccleston, so I stopped watching again. I got back into the series from random episodes being shown on Sci-Fi Channel and started my endeavor to watch them all in order. This morning, I finished, ending with what was the first of five special episodes for 2009-2010 because David Tennant is busy doing Shakespeare.

The Next Doctor was written by writer Russell T Davies, who has written some episodes such as the revived pilot episode "Rose", the Christmas Specials (which "The Next Doctor" technically is one of), season premiers, season finales, and some other sadly unremarkable episodes. A competent writer, but he's no Steven Moffat to be sure. The episode was directed by Andy Goddard, who was sporting his name on Doctor Who for the first time, having just finished a stint directing a spin-off series, Torchwood. I have no real complaints about either the directing or writing, as it is all done very differently for television and was done in usual Doctor Who style and magnificence. The acting was, as always with the series, fantastic with David Tennant and his long coat, brainy specs, sonic screwdriver and high pitched exacerbated voice. The supporting cast too, was stylish and British and everything it needs to be to work in The Doctor's world.

For those who don't know and are still reading for some reason, a history lesson: The Doctor is a Time Lord--the last one, in fact--and in this particular story he is the tenth incarnation of the The Doctor. When a Time Lord dies, he/she regenerates into a different form, having all the same memories and abilities but having a different personality quirk each time and being played by a different actor. Having just been left by everyone he loved, The Doctor finds himself in London 1851 on Christmas Eve and finds the titular Next Doctor as played by David Morrissey. The Cybermen are back and are trying to convert the human race again. David Morrissey's Doctor is trying to figure out a murder mystery surrounding them with his own sonic screwdriver (a screwdriver that makes noise) and his own TARDIS (a hot air balloon).

Now, I had the plot figured out relatively quickly, save for the initial confusion, and that was kind of disappointing to me. I like being surprised by a twist ending, not seeing it coming from miles away. Plus, the Cybermen were really badass when they came back in the revived series, but after the Daleks ripped them apart in the season two finale they kind of lost their appeal as a big baddy. Now they're just kind of lame, and all I can think of is Dalek Sec saying "We can destroy eight million Cybermen with one Dalek." And he was right. Therefore, Cybermen=lame.

The episode as a whole wasn't bad. Had all the things that make Doctor Who so great: humor, drama, running. But as with other Christmas episodes, he didn't have a proper companion with which to directly relate to. I still think Billie Piper as Rose Tyler was a high point in the series, whether she was with Tennant or Eccleston, and Martha Jones grew on you quickly; less so for Donna Noble, but in the end she's the savior of the universe. And now, right after they're all gone, here's The Doctor alone again--which isn't to say that he's bad alone. It just makes it harder to identify with.

I am interested where the next four specials are going to go. It has been announced that Matthew Smith will be taking over the role of The Doctor in season five, and I can't help but want to see how The Doctor is going to kick off and need to regenerate. I also wonder if River Song from the "Silence in the Library"/"Forest of the Dead" serial comes back in any of these specials, as she was obviously very close to The Doctor in his tenth incarnation to recognize him so readily. The next special will air in England on Easter, and in the states some time afterward. But fear not! I will find a way to review that son of a bitch as soon as I can.

-Evan "Dez" O'Connor

Redskull Motors

2009-03-16T13:18:00.004-04:00

Here's another one with curses, and this review on something based on an subjective experience I've had with my car I bought from a shop in my hometown.

I grew up in Gloucester, Massachusetts--something I do not like admitting. I am utterly ashamed to be from this town; I have told my mother to her face that she is a bad parent for voluntarily raising children here (I'm actually writing this from my mother's house, as opposed to my apartment in Salem). You will never find a more concentrated place of stupid and just plain bad people. The school system is the worst in New England, if not the entire East coast. When most people hear I'm from Gloucester, they ask me one of two questions. The first: "Are you anyone's father?" due in large because of the teen pregnancy thing that happened at the high school back in 2008. That question makes me hit people. The second and less asked question is "Why are the Gloucester sports teams so good?" Steroids and a total lack of brain cells on the part of all the players. But this is all a moot point. This review is of a local car shop with a good reputation that has been in business for over thirty years.

Whitehead Motors is owned by the Whitehead family, obviously, and they are your typical Gloucester people. No brains, stupid mouths, and relatively worthless except to do their menial jobs that they think takes so much skill to do. Their wrong. They're always going to be wrong. People like them exist only to make me look better.

As a personal history lesson, I drove a 1997 Nissan Sentra for four years until the transmission fell out of it as I was driving home for Christmas. Before I could drive myself home, I had to get a new car, so I bought a 1998 Chevy Malibu with around 65,000 miles on it from Mr. Whitehead for less than $3000. Brilliant, I thought. I only drove the thing to work and back, about ten miles round trip, with the occasional trip to Seabrook, NH or Framingham. So I put very few miles on it. Less than three weeks after I bought it, the timing belt went, making me lose power steering and having the engine overheat. It was towed from Salem to Gloucester, fixed, and returned. Two weeks later, the check engine light turned on. Brought it in, they fixed it, and then the NEXT FUCKING DAY it was on again. So, instead of just blowing it out of the system, they fix it. Nope. A week later, same problem. They fix it, and again, a week later. They refuse to give me a receipt, which is against the lemon law--even if the work is free of charge. This happens again 3 weeks later. They "find out" what's wrong with it, order a part, I bring it back, and they fix it again. Thank Christ, I finally have a car that works. Not bloody likely. Again, less than a week later, the same problem arrises.

In total, this has happened about six or seven times.

My father calls attorney general, the office of consumer affairs to follow up on the lemon law--as all of this happened under the warrantee time--and they say we have to make them aware that this is the last time we're giving them a chance to fix it before demanding a refund. Whitehead gives us all kinds of shit, saying they could be charging us for the work they're doing, which they can't because it's under warrantee, and that there's depreciation on the car if they buy it back, which is true but they also have to pay for the inspection, registration, and everything else I paid on the car, and they refused. My dad makes an appointment to have my car fixed Thursday. Now, I wasn't there for most of this. I would have said fuck no, because I'm on spring break and want to go away. When I got there, my dad said all of this, and I was pissed. I want my money and I want a new car--preferably one that never even crossed this asshole's field of vision. I'm swearing and I'm angry and not without reason. I've been without my car 3-4 days a week for the past month. My mom has had to drive from Gloucester to Salem just to bring me to work because the car is a piece of shit. So, after my mother arrives, we go in to speak with them again they are trying to be helpful and I'm trying to be quiet so I don't threaten them or something. My mom is getting upset, and they tell her to calm down. I say "I haven't said a word, and you don't want me to start" and this is where Whitehead motherfucker says he heard me talking outside and "he wouldn't be proud of me if I were his son." Man is lucky to still be breathing, talking to me like that. People like him exist to make me look better.

In the end, I left the car there, because there is no way I'm driving it back later this week. So he refused that he has to pay for everything, which will be a surprise to him when the attorney general says he has to. That, or I rip his fucking throat out.

These people are so stupid, they have lost THOUSANDS of dollars because of flooding and they don't have insurance. You would think that after the first time, they would spring for the insurance. Nope. Happened again. And they were still surprised. What's more is they give my mother attitude and act like she is so far below them, but they treat my father with respect. Misogyny is not uncommon among the retarded Gloucester people, but they shouldn't bring it into their business practices.

So, after thirty years of good reputation, I come to bury Whitehead, not to praise him. He is a rude asshole motherfucker who thinks he's better than everyone else when he obviously isn't. His son, who also works at the shop, isn't much better and thinks he's doing me such a huge favor by doing his fucking job and fixing the car which is still under warrantee. After selling me a lemon and being so hesitant to put any real effort into fixing it, they are calling bullshit on the lemon law. Regardless of how this turns out, I cannot stress enough how awful these people are and how shoddy their business practices are. Typical Gloucester people: stupid and just plain bad. Uneducated, and look down on those who don't know anything about cars despite the fact that I am going to go places in this world that they will never see pictures of, because they don't deserve a life like that. Would you really want to do business with a place that treats people as such and takes shortcuts in repairs, just to get the upper hand for the bill after the warrantee is over and the problem comes up again? You get what you pay for. Tell them to eat shit, flood their lot, and laugh because they still don't have insurance.

-Evan "Dez" O'Connor

Submersible citrus

2009-03-15T01:03:00.005-04:00

There is some cursing in this review. I've been trying to avoid doing so to help me appear more journalistic and respectable than how I could if I wrote the way I spoke in every day life, but in this I felt it a bit necessary in a few places.

I like horror movies. I like movies that people can only describe as "fucked up" and things that most people run away screaming from. So when my coworker--another fan of the depraved arts of horror and gore--told me that there was a movie that killed a part of him that he is never going to get back, I became almost giddy at the prospect of being messed with to the point of suicide because of a goddamn movie. I mean, what really can it be that made not only him but the other two people I know who have seen it agree with him? This is going to be a magical experience, and I should probably do it when my roommate is out of state so he doesn't have to find me in the morning.

Sublime (2007) is a movie that I knew nothing about before being told it kills parts of souls that can never be retrieved. All I bothered to find out about it was this: it's a horror film from 2007 that takes place in a hospital and it published by Raw Feed, a film label I knew nothing about. I didn't know anything other than that. Didn't know who was in it, who directed it, who wrote it, who published it, NOTHING. I wanted no more outside information to sway my opinion of it because I was already so hyped up because this movie had the power to kill me inside, and the thought of that excited me because if a horror movie can actually do that it is achieving exactly what horror movies should do and have never been able to. And my hopes were so high. I was gleeful at the prospect of not being able to sleep for reasons other than insomnia.

To catch you up to what you soon learn in the film, George Grieves as played by Thomas Cavanagh is turning forty, celebrating with his family comprised of Kathleen York as the wife, Shannah Collins as the daughter, Kyle Gallner as the son, and David Clayton Rogers as his brother among other friends, and going to the hospital the following day with his first ever colonoscopy. He gets there, meets the cute nurse Zoe played by Katherine Cunningham-Eves and the Persian doctor played by Cas Anvar. Something obviously goes horribly wrong and George is now slipping in and out of consciousness and more and more bizarre things are happening to him.

Now, the director of the film was one Tony Krantz who has produced many films and television shows, but only directed two--Sublime being the first. To him, I have to say this: brilliant. The directing was my favorite part of this film, but that may be damning it with faint praise, you haven't read the rest of the review yet, have you? The film starts with some kind of jerky camera work, where the camera is panning in a certain direction and you assume it's going to continue and it all of a sudden stops, so you have to look at the waterfall or the curtains to see if the movie froze or if it was deliberate--and it was wonderfully deliberate. Every last bit of directing, from the fuzzy grain added to half of the screen in some of scenes, and--someone has to explain this to me--how do you get fuzzy grain in the foreground but not in the background? Cinematographer Dermott Downs, I know cinematography and that's not something I'm used to. It was brilliant, perfectly sublime--a credit to its title.

The writer, Erik Jendresen, is an aspiring horror writer, it seems as he has written several, more than one of which has been published by Raw Feed. I need to say, the first half of the film was great. The chronology of the scenes kind of reminded me of John Mighton's stageplay turned screenplay Possible Worlds directed by Robert Lepage--a great movie in its own right. It weaves in between George in the hospital, dazed, confused, and sedated and the day of his birthday from the night of the party and gifts to seeing his children that morning. What happens in each time period somehow relates to what has just happened or what is going to happen and it really is a good way to tell a story such as this. I damned Rachel Getting Married for its slow pacing, but Sublime pulls it off. It's slow and painfully matriculated. It's similar to the pacing of the video game Silent Hill 2, where it doesn't need to be actually doing anything to scare you.

The music done by Peter Golub and Anthony Marinelli was mostly ambient with only a smallest hint of sinister intentions behind it, and it worked so well. Even the sound effects--actually, I should explain something first. Most of the time, unless I am viewing with friends, I will watch a movie on my laptop with my noise-canceling headphones on. The sound is all crystal clear, and I am unfortunately unaware of how it would sound coming out of my 19" Toshiba or even my 22" LCD TV in the living room, but some of the sounds--such as the pruning shears on the Home Shopping Network that always seems to be on in the hospital--are hugely enhanced and just makes your skin crawl.

The acting was pretty good, with very few exceptions. Very slow building but oppressive horror was pretty much flowing out of them. And I didn't expect to see the hottest sex scene of any movie I've ever seen, but goddamnit in a way.

And now that I'm done screaming about all the things I loved about the film, here's where I'm going to end it:

Shittier than the shittiest shit that ever fucking shit.

I mean, COME ON, the twist at the end was unexpected, to be sure, but it was fucking RETARDED. Controversies of the medical world being responsible for everything...are you kidding me? Thats the big horror? Playing off people's fears is one thing, but feeding them irrational fears and then preying on it--when it can be as quickly dismissed as it can be picked up--is just not how it's done. All the things I had loved about the movie--the directing, the writing, the cool sound effects--the only things that stuck around was the music and the decent acting and the rest of it went down the goddamn toilet. The last half hour to forty-five minutes of this adventure was crippling to the entire film. A twist is supposed to be shocking and end the film, not be shocking and then make you wish it never happened for the sake of entertainment. Even the "That's fucked up" notion stopped at the end, because it wasn't scary or discomforting anymore. This isn't just the gore-hound in me complaining either, because all the gore in the film took place at the very end; it was just completely unnecessary. When I am saying that grotesque torture, blood, and pain are unnecessary, you're doing something horribly wrong.

I know this just sounds horrible from a reviewer's standpoint, but I can't explain why all this negativity is so true without spoiling it, and that would be against what reviewers are meant to do. Not only that, but this movie in now way shape or form killed any part of me, unless you count the part of me that had hope that a horror movie could actually fucking do what horror movies are supposed to do.

-Evan "Dez" O'Connor

Senko Yes Ronde

2009-03-14T12:00:00.003-04:00

As previously stated, I work at a video game store. The people I work with are gamers, much like myself. We don't always like the same types of games, obviously. One of my coworkers is very into fighting games. When we started hanging out, I couldn't have disagreed more. I prefer games with a good story and interesting and fun gameplay. The "same crap, different shovel" approach to games is NOT what I'm going for. But in the time I've been there, fighting games have grown on me. One game in particular caught me awkwardly. When it was first presented to me I thought it was the dumbest thing I had ever seen--absolutely pointless and why the hell is this even on my tv? The next morning, I couldn't get it out of my brain and I wanted to play it.

WarTech: Senko No Ronde for the Xbox 360 (2007) was originally released in 2005 as an arcade game in Japan. Less than a year and a half later, it was ported to the 360 in Japan and nearly a year later, the Ubisoft brought the game to the states. Why Ubisoft did that I will never understand. Then again, I will never understand why Ubisoft publishes games like Haze and the Imagine series when it could be doing Assassin's Creed, No More Heroes, and Rainbow Six. Publishing companies have been going up and down in ranking of completely useless to pioneering and fun--places that historically were held by EA and Activision respectively and completely flip-flopped in 2008--but Ubisoft have always pushed a few really good titles while grinding out the crap with a vengeance. Not as harshly as CodeMasters, but crap nonetheless.

Since story is so important to me, I feel like I should mention it here. Problem is, I've never been able to decipher it. So here is what Wikipedia says.

"Due to a past catastrophe on Earth, humanity was forced to live amongst the stars for several centuries, resulting in the creation of the S.D. calendar and the birth of the Aria Federation, an empire whose influence extends from Earth to Saturn. In S.D. 1478, an embassy located within the empire's capital on Earth's moon was seized by terrorists, and forces deployed by Aria's Special Space Service ended in disaster as the terrorists triggered a self-detonation device, killing themselves and several civilians in the process.

The actual game begins six years after this event, with the player assuming the role of one of eight characters who will become involved in a mastermind's scheme to take control of the Aria Federation's superweapon and use it for his own purposes."

Yeah, I'm not even sure if that's right. But there it is, I guess.

WarTech is a cross between a top-down shooter a la R-Type and a 2D fighting game. You're probably thinking what my cousins, friends, and siblings think when they see me play it: Double-you tee eff. That's what I thought too. I thought this was the most retarded collection of pixels to ever invade my television, and I couldn't wait till my friend left and took the abomination with him. But the next morning as I play Soul Calibur, I couldn't help but want to taste the graphical explosions of that Japanese epileptic seizure. I went to my local game store and bought a used copy for less than $10.

Each character has a crappy anime picture of them, but its irrelevant because they fight in these robot suits called Rounders (don't ask me why, I don't know). These Rounders shoot random patterns of lasers and bombs until someone presses the right trigger and the Rounder becomes the irritating B.O.S.S. at the end of all those levels of Aegis Wing. Problem is that this mode is harder than hell to control. Unless you have a strategy guide in front of you--or you're Japanese--you don't know what buttons do what, so it more or less becomes "Button-mashing mode" and hoping something you're hitting will be the ultra-super attack that wrecks the other player. The BOSS mode is a good way to save yourself if you're low on health and a good way to kill your opponent if you can press it before they do.

Other than the obvious Versus mode, there is a Score Attack, which is basically arcade mode, and a Story mode. I have beaten Score Attack with every character and Story with all but one and I had NO idea what the story for the game was until I started writing this review and looked it up. That, and they all speak in Japanese, with tiny English subtitles. Even in the middle of fights, when the last thing you're paying attention to in the maelstrom of blasters, missiles, and spinning melee attacks are the semi-transparent little faces with words coming out of them.

Where Soul Calibur is a fighting game which is based on the 360 degree fighting arena and your moves being particular to what angle you're attacking from, Mortal Kombat is based on the unique moves of each character, Street Fighter is based on each characters strengths and weaknesses, and Virtua Fighter is based on combos, WarTech's fighting system is based on how close or how far away you are from each other. When you're far away, you fire wildly. A little closer, and it gets a bit more concentrated. Closer to the inner circle, you spin out of control and try to hit them with a melee attack. It was hard to get at first, but after a couple of matches, the gameplay really comes together.

I tend to recommend this game to most everyone I know, but it's mostly because I think it's funny to see their confused faces. No one ever plays it. It is a crazy storm of random crap that will never make sense and is far too short to ever amount to too much fun. But for under $10, even brand new, you really can't lose. It's been compared a lot to Virtual On, which I played once on my Dreamcast, so if you've actually played and enjoyed those games, I would seriously suggest WarTech: Senko No Ronde. Otherwise, I will suggest you play it only because it amuses me.

-Evan "Dez" O'Connor

Asphyxiate

2009-03-13T18:39:00.000-04:00

Now that midterms are over and spring break is upon me, I will hopefully become a reviewing machine over the next week or so. I have lots of things on my list: soul-killing movies, remake movies done by the same guy who did them in the first place, Xbox 360 ports of Japanese arcade fighting games, albums made by local people that are supposed to make me laugh, and maybe even a guest review from one of my coworkers. All of this crap and more. But first, I decided I'd start with a movie that I really wanted to see in theaters but only saw today for the first time.

Choke (2008) is based on a book written by one of my favorite authors, Chuck Palahniuk. Choke was optioned to be a film after the success of his other film adaptation of Fight Club. Considering the film-rights were sold back in 2001, before the book was even published, they have had a hell of a long time to work on it and hopefully it paid off in the form of one badass dark comedy. It is atypical for me to have such high hopes as I am usually disappointed--this time especially since so many movies suck recently and Choke being one of my favorite books in high school. However, with the omnipresent exception caused by my critical outlook I have on every movie, book, album, video game, and person, the movie has lived up to a lot of what I expected from it.

Directed by actor Clark Gregg, this was another directorial debut from an actor. I have literally seen him in nothing, despite having over fifty films to his credit, except for Choke in which he plays a minor character. The main character is played by Sam Rockwell, who you probably remember best from being the crazy pedophile from The Green Mile whose throat you justed wanted to slit Solid Snake style. In Choke, Rockwell plays the part of Victor Mancini, still a sex addict, but this time does it with consenting adults, except for in the "poodle" scene, but that was one of my favorite scenes in the book so its okay. He is a historical interpreter (read: tour guide) at one of those colonial places you find all over New England and Virginia and the like. He takes care of his institutionalized mother as played by Anjelica Huston with money he makes from forcing himself to choke in restaurants and be saved by rich people who then, after saving his life, take an interest in his life and problems and send him money to make sure the life they saved is still being saved through their actions. Genius plan, if you think about it. He attends sex addict meetings with his best friend Denny and constantly gets laid after sneaking off to the bathroom with the girl he is supposed to be sponsoring through her own sexual addiction. Not a bad way to get laid, either.

If you couldn't tell, there is a lot of sex in this movie. A lot is describing it conservatively. Pretty much every female character with the exception of Vincent's mother is shown topless at some point--a wonderful job of the otherwise bland directing on Clark Gregg's part in which nearly every woman that Vincent sees is shown in a flash of what he imagines they look like naked or a shot of him actually eating them out or taking them from behind--even the ones you wish you didn't.

The rest of the directing was all very samey and the flashes of white to the flashbacks get the point across but still lack something in the creative mind that should be present in such a film. Gregg's adaptation of the script was not bad, with my one glaring exception of the nursing home women all standing around clapping and laughing as Vincent's telling them off, and the directing was adequate but didn't quite capture all the film should have presented of the film. The narration at the beginning was dead-on, but was used to infrequently afterwards. The choices the writers and editors made to make this film rated R as opposed to anything else--as I'm sure the MPAA was damn close to not letting it be released at all--were good ones. It had all the dark humor it should have had, even with the add of the drama, and pulled it off nicely, I feel.

The acting was pretty top-knotch. Despite having always envisioned Vincent as a more of a Taylor Nichols looking-character and I still uphold he would have played the role well, Rockwell's Vincent was about as close to the picture as I could have imagined. Huston's Ida Mancini was quite good as well, and she was goddamn brilliant in the flashback scenes opposite Jonah Bobo as her pre-teen son. Brad William Henke who played Vince's best friend Denny played the part of a reformed sex addict pretty well, and even played off the uncaring I-just-got-fired/wtf kind of moments in style.

Being the Special Jury winner at Sundance is nothing to cough at. Or jerk off at, depending on which movie-relevant metaphor I want to use. If In Bruges hadn't come out last year, this would have been in contention for my personal best film of 2008. It's a shame Rockwell isn't more popular as an actor, appearing mostly in cult-favorites and sleeper hits, but I'm sure that will change after he's in Iron Man II as Justin Hammer.

-Evan "Dez" O'Connor

The Way of the Cyst

2009-03-06T09:23:00.000-05:00

Now that the pesky first review is over, I can work on things I actually want to talk about. So here's one about an album I was recently exposed to while hanging out with some friends. We were hanging out, playing pool in the basement, and this came on my buddy's computer and I thought it sounded a lot like Motograter. Let's get one thing straight: I love Motograter. I saw them live at OzzFest back in 2003 and really liked the music, and the vocals were probably the best part. The writing for the songs also came as a surprise from most metal acts, and the songs ranged from brutal fight songs, introspective letters, to pointing out all thats wrong with the world--and it pulled them all off wonderfully. Come to find that Ivan "Ghost" Moody is the singer of both bands. It ended up being a band I had heard of more times than I could imagine but never actually heard.

The Way of the Fist by Five Finger Death Punch (2007) at first listen is a great album. Ivan Moody is a great vocalist, hitting all the right notes from his deep growl to his haunting melodies. The guitar work by Darrell Roberts added an almost classic metal feel with squealing solos. Some of the best songs on the album are the bonus tracks from the 2008 re-release like Never Enough, Stranger Than Fiction, and Hate Me. The best song on the original release of album by far was their single The Bleeding with one of the most intense music videos I've ever seen from a metal band.

It's when you listen to the album from start to finish you start to notice something. The themes in the songs are used and reused ad naseum with very few exceptions. The album opens with Ashes with the anti-Midas image of "Everything I touch turns to ashes." Nice opener for the album even if the song for some reason appears a little lackluster due to the brutal verses followed by a kind of lacking in brutality and melodie chorus. The album title track, The Way of the Fist is a fight song that reminds me of some really good UFC fights, especially since the video for the song is a typical metal video with montages of cage fights mixed with the band performing in a cage of their own.

Salvation is where the repeating theme starts. The song is more or less about how he is looked down on for not believing in the their God or whatever--a message I can appreciate at its base by being a lapsed Catholic myself. The songwriting is dead on, with a really good chorus "I won't bow to something that I've never seen/I can't believe in something that doesn't believe in me/I'm not blood of your blood, I'm no son of your god/I've no faith in your fate/Still I find salvation." The melody melding into painful screaming counters the heavy-handed pre-chorus that screams how the followers of said belief are just "puppets on strings," which is technically not how you make friends. Other songs that echo this I'm-not-good-enough/ You're-just-a-follower/Why-doesn't-daddy-love-me motif are...almost all of them! Seriously, A Place to Die, The Devil's Own, Death Before Dishonor, Meet the Monster, Never Enough, and Hate Me. I mean, these are all great songs with good writing and good vocals and guitar in each of them, but we don't need an entire metal album about the same damn thing. The only other songs are the already mentioned amazing The Bleeding, White Knuckles which could be misheard as a fight song but really has some amazing writing behind it, and Can't Heal You which could almost fit in the other theme.

Each of the songs on the album is worth a listen and they're all very well done, but to listen to the whole album in one sitting you start to hear the repeating and unoriginal ideals the music is throwing at you. The songs are just too frequent and in too close of proximity to another on the album. The re-release also included an acoustic version of The Bleeding if you're into that kind of thing. I like it a lot, as do some of my friends, but there are arguments that "metal bands shouldn't do that." I think those arguments are full of crap, because I like when people do things differently than they're used to or if they make something their own. Five Finger Death Punch does exactly that in their album, if only they did a little bit more variety in their themes.

-Evan "Dez" O'Connor

Ynne Hathaway Getting Sober or something

2009-03-05T17:58:00.003-05:00

So I was wondering to myself, what the hell do I do for my first legitimate review? Actually, I was wondering to a lot of people, as I was open to suggestion. I didn't want to do another video game because I didn't want to pigeon-hole myself as a video game reviewer, nor did I want to review something old that would make me seem like jumping late on the band wagon. There's a movie coming out next week I want to see and subsequently review, but I didn't want to wait that long. Here enters my good lady friend who has far too much influence over me who suggests that I watch this movie that she had just finished bad-mouthing to me. So of course, I did. Because (her words, not mine) "watching indie films is oh so collegiate."

Rachel Getting Married (2008) was directed by Jonathan Demme, who also directed Silence of the Lambs, Philadelphia, The Manchurian Candidate, as well as many many others. To be fair, I only saw the first two movies I just mentioned, but I enjoyed them immensely and would even go so far as to say that Silence of the Lambs is one of my favorite movies and the directing in it is part of my saying that. The directing in Rachel Getting Married is different, but it kept me watching. I would go so far as to say that it was very well directed, thanks to Mr. Demme.

The film was the first written work (or at least the first listed on IMDB) by Jenny Lumet, and it kind of shows. The writing at the beginning perks my interest. Why can't that obviously strung out person not have his Zippo? I feel his pain, as my Zippo was stolen from me a number of years ago and I never got another one. So what the hell? Give the dude his Zippo. Then Anne Hathaway--who I will say now that I have been a fan of every since she broke free of the stigma of having her breakout role be the lead in The Princess Diaries--mentions that he's burned down a self-help library multiple times. Oh. Maybe you shouldn't give him his Zippo back.

So I assume, since I knew absolutely nothing of this movie before viewing, that Anne Hathaway was Rachel and that she was hence getting married. I was wrong. Anne played a girl named Kym, and why is there a Y in that name now? But anyway, she is getting out of rehab and for some reason she's not allowed to drive, but it may have something to do with what the Zippo dude said about her killing someone. Her father and assumed mother pick her up and pack her things and they leave. The drive home is also well directed, thanks to Jonathan Demme. The whole film looks as if it were shot with a really good hand-held digital camera and is shot in a way that almost makes it look like a 3rd person documentary, but the camera-holder is invisible and can leap across set pieces as easy as thinking. But now Anne is asking about her mom, which easily sets up that the woman in the car is now obviously her step-mother. Thats great. I've written scripts too, Jenny; it was a good job of introducing this fact.

For about the first--ooohhh--27 and a half minutes, I was really intrigued in the film. The directing was doing something so different that I was enjoying watching it and the writing was, well, not great but tolerable in most respects. Anne Hathaway was doing tremendously well, and Paul Irwin who played her father was also entertaining and doing a fine job acting. Introducing Rachel and Emma (who was a particular bitch) came and went and how the wedding is in two days and Kym wants to be the maid of honor, but NO she's a crazy bitch who does drugs, but Emma gives it up because she's a crazy bitch who wants the sisters to fight and blah blah blah. This is where it got to me.

This was the part of the film where things started getting a little emotional, and I'm not going to lie: I'm an emotional kind of guy. I get upset when I see people in pain. It's not a happy thing for me. But the directing of the film was doing something to me. It was making something I would normally find to be upsetting and a little overwhelming (because it is shot in such an oddly personal level) appear so removed that I couldn't be bothered to feel bad for anything I was seeing. The poor to mediocre writing was only amplifying how little I felt for the characters on screen.

About halfway through the film, there are several scenes where Anne Hathaway is nowhere to be found for around ten minutes. In most movies, this is fine and even expected. But the way it has been shot and the way that it been written were making her very personal with the camera. Almost every line was about her. What wasn't about her and was instead about the wedding, she is in the backround of the shot, looking all pouty. But now, she is beyond ear-shot, which hadn't happened, and she had little to no relevance to the conversation being had. This bothered me because I cared so little for Rachel getting married (the plot point, not the film itself) that I just wanted to see more of Kym and her recovering neurosis.

More of the writing that I did not like was the fact that Lumet actually stole a line from the old Winny The Pooh books and used it as a toast to the wedded couple from a thickly accented Jamaican guy. And she didn't credit it, which kind of makes me want to scream.

This is where my roommate interrupted and I was almost pleased that I could pause the movie for a second. It was getting kind of hard to take.

Kym needed to be the center of attention, which made her come off as a bitch. But pretty much the only thoroughly likable people in the film were the father, played wonderfully by Bill Irwin, and the groom, played by Tunde Adebimpe and right now I am really glad I'm not doing review videos because I would have no idea how to pronounce that. I mean, sure, Kym is a great character, but she is so unlikeable in some of the scenes that its hard to misunderstand why people might not want her around all the time.

And then something else strange happened. During the crazy climax where things come all out in the open, the odd disinterested feeling I had in all the characters and their feelings went away as if pushed off by a sexually frustrated secretary trying to seduce her boss. I got all emotional and I felt bad for not feeling for them earlier, but then I dismissed that because it was obviously the film's fault for not making me care any sooner. It moves at a damn glacier's pacing and the writing is so bland that I couldn't have been expected to feel anything earlier.

The soundtrack of the film was very natural, as all the music we hear in the audience they hear in the film, which again makes it seem very observer-ish. The music was interesting, at least, and fit well with the film and even the directing.

As a whole, Rachel Getting Married is probably not something I would have watched if I had not been suggested it as an idea for something to review. As a whole, it probably isn't something I will watch again, except on the off chance that someone I know reads this review and finds it interesting enough to ask me to watch it with them. Or if it will get me sex. It was a fair way to spend two hours, but I expected little to nothing from the actual film. The film has won over a dozen awards (over half of which went to Anne Hathaway for best actress), and was nominated for many many more so it apparently did something right. How Jenny Lumet won best screenplay and Jonathan Demme got NOTHING for directing, I will never know.

-Evan "Dez" O'Connor

Biases and Preferences

2009-03-03T12:57:00.000-05:00

I realize that part of the reason my Killzone 2 first impression "review" was so long was I kept interjecting with reasons why I felt certain ways, comparing to other games--especially when it came to online multiplayer. So I figured to avoid that in the future I'd make a short list of things that will be present in my reviews and why I may say some of the things I will usually say.

Video games - I am a gamer. Most of my reviews will probably be for things of this type. I own an Xbox 360, a PlayStation 3, a Nintendo Wii, a Sega Dreamcast, and a PC. With very few exceptions, any game that is multiplatform I will play for the Xbox 360. I enjoy all kinds of games, from first-person shooters to in depth role-playing games to fighting games. I like a lot of artistic games as well as the exploration of game as an actual art form. Graphics are important, but do not make or break gameplay, except in the case of overly chibi-anime graphics that I cannot stand and won't play past the first few hours. Persona 4 is a good example for this. The gameplay was fantastic and I was really into it, but the graphics couldn't let me enjoy the game properly. As previously mentioned in my Killzone 2 impression, I don't spend a lot of time with online multiplayer. My reviews of games will not always be positive, as I work at a gaming retailer and have access to all kinds of games. My reviews of games will not always be new titles; a lot of them will be retrospective titles that I have a lot to say about, especially if I find the game hasn't garnered the attention it should have.

Movies - I do not watch as many films as I used to, with school and work eating my life. I like a lot of gore, but I also enjoy comedy, drama, and pretty much anything that will entertain me. From seeing movies with friends, I find I do not watch films the way most people do. I named In Bruges my best film of 2008 not to be contrary from most people swooning over The Dark Knight as many have accused me of, but because the entire movie was fantastic. The acting, the soundtrack, and--most of all--the directing was out-of-this-world good. The directing of a film can break a film that has a lot going for it (ie The Da Vinci Code) but it cannot--or at least very rarely--save a bad film (a la Silent Hill). When the art direction of a game is also good, such as Sin City, a lot of other things can be forgiven. The characters of a film also must draw attention and be relatable in order to feel some form of sympathy for them. The first three Saw movies did this well, making you feel that the victims didn't necessarily deserve to die for their "crimes"--something Saw IV threw out the window when it was rapists and wife-beaters being killed as they rightly deserved, taking away from the sympathy and therefore the unpleasantness that should be expected from watching a torture-porn film. Classic movies are also a favorite of mine, and I hope to review some of them as well. With the current spewing out of half-assed films, a lot of reviews on newer movies may not be very positive.

Television - My favorite television show of all time is M*A*S*H. I own all eleven seasons on DVD and watch them regularly. Some of favorite currently airing shows are House, M.D. and Doctor Who. I enjoy a lot of comedy in my television watching, but a taste of drama is necessary to keep me coming back. When I review a show, I may review an entire season, a single episode, or perhaps even the series to date, depending on the life of the show. A lot of my TV watching is spent either on DVD or Nick at Night, when I'm doing homework in the background, so it is safe to assume a lot of my reviews of television shows will be from the past, but the new season of Doctor Who will lend to a few interesting reviews regarding that show and the history of it's 45-year life. A lot of what I said for films is also true for television, so expect different opinions on shows than your used to.

Books - I also don't get to read as often as I would like, outside of books for literature classes. My favorite authors are Chuck Palahniuk, Mike McCormack, TA Barron, and Christopher Rice. I tend to not read books I don't like, so a lot of my reviews on books will be positive. There probably won't be as many classic reviews as with other mediums as I don't particularly enjoy the classics, but I do appreciate some of them. Some of my book reviews may be closely related to poetry or an art form of some kind. Some reviews may be based off books I read in my youth, and if I feel particularly venomous, I may give my scathing opinion on JK Rowling, the stupid bitch.

Music - I am a metalhead, but I also listen to a lot of different music. The only thing you will not hear me listening to on a regular basis is rap music. I listen to avante garde stuff, some straight rock, some soft acoustic music, thrashing metal, folk, punk, alternative, and really anything that catches my ear in a good way. My pick for best album of 2008 was Amanda Palmer's debut solo album Who Killed Amanda Palmer after her departure from one of my favorite groups, The Dresden Dolls. The choice for best album for me to the wire between Ms Palmer and Weezer's Red Album. I am the host of a radio show, which you can listen to 9PM to midnight EST on Mondays on http://www.wmwmonline.com.

Other reviews I post, such as for concerts or sporting events will probably be limited to UFC events as I am a big mixed martial arts fan. I do not base my reviews on any outside sources, only on my own experiences. Being articulate and having an opinion is something I enjoy, so there will hopefully be all kinds of reviews coming here in the future. With more reviews will hopefully come a readership, so I hope this will turn into a regular happening.

-Evan "Dez" O'Connor

First Impressions

2009-03-02T21:33:00.000-05:00

Starting a review blog is something I initially intended to make videos for, but since making videos means I need to make myself presentable it takes a bit more work than I can muster with college and a lead position at a retailer draining me.

For my first post (hopefully the first of many) I am going to give my first impressions on a couple of video games I find myself playing lately.

Killzone 2 (PlayStation 3) - The sequel to the hailed "Halo-killer" for the PS2 that disappointed many who looked for something to kick Master Chief in the teeth. It should be noted that I never played the first game despite being a PS2 owner and never owned an original Xbox. I believe the Killzone 2 is going to pull off its Halo-killer status, even if it is technically only going up against Halo Wars and/or Halo 3: ODST . Granted, I am only a couple levels into the story, but it has kept me going back even after I get tagged by the Helghast and decide to give it a break. The first-person cover system works incredibly well, and gives a nice change of pace from Gears of War style third-person pop and shoot or even the mostly-first-person Rainbow Six: Vegas series. It is obvious how it competes with the Halo series with its vehicle sections, and the fact that your character is constantly thrown into cut-scenes from a theatrical point of view. The problem with Sergeant Tomas "Sev" Sevchenko, the protagonist of Killzone 2 (notably not the protagonist from the first game) is that he isn't a hugely armored super soldier--he looks just like every other grunt marine you're fighting alongside. I wasn't sure which person I was until nearly the second level. The Sixaxis controls are interesting, but they could easily be better used with good-old button pressing. The control controversies I've heard about are somewhat truthful. The controls do lag a bit, but I didn't sense it hugely impeding my skill at the game except when it came to doing melee attacks when I press the button after sprinting up for the kill and discovering I'm swinging at air and the Helghast has now run behind me and is certainly making feel very bad for what I tried to do to him. Knowing my skill at first-person shooters (which I like to believe is considerable) I humored the idea that I was unwittingly compensating for the controls running about 100ms slower than most games. To test this, I jumped into a multiplayer game as I have heard the lag hurts especially when playing against real people as opposed to AI. Here is where I should probably say this: I am not a huge fan of multiplayer. I will play it, but it is not the driving source behind my buying of games. I played Halo 3 because I wanted to finish the story, not because I wanted to shoot people in customizable Spartan armor with a shotgun after I spawn-camped and I never rose above the rank of Sergeant because I just didn't care enough. I played Rainbow Six: Vegas 2 because...well, that's a bad example. I played that because everyone I worked with said it kicked ass and I wanted to give it a shot. The point is, I actually really liked the story, and I even enjoyed the Terrorist Hunts a whole hell of a lot but never got into the other multiplayer modes. Gears of War multiplayer always bothered me and I never got into it, except for Gears of War 2 had Horde which seemed like reverse T-Hunts, and that was awesome. Metal Gear Solid 4, my pick for best game of 2008, I never played multiplayer. The point is I do not buy games for multiplayer capabilities. The single-player is what sells it, the multiplayer is a bonus, and that's if I even care to try it. The multiplayer for Killzone 2 is so fun I had to stop playing it after three games because I knew that if I didn't, I wouldn't go to class in the morning. Maybe it's because I scored an average of 30 points a game, something I could never do in Halo but I loved playing as the ISA going up against the Helghast being controlled by actual people and playing mini-objectives in each map to be added to the quintessential "shoot dudes"--which was sometimes the mini-objective too. The cover system was taken out of multiplayer, which added the need for creative thinking and more tactics from you and your squad of other PS3 owners, most of whom did not spring for the bluetooth headset. The ones who did, though, were very good about giving useful information about enemy location, objective status, and where the hell those grenades are coming from--a nice change from whiny-voiced kids telling me not to kill them in Halo 3 because their mom is calling them on the phone. And not one person corpse-humped me, which I appreciated. Overall, I think Killzone 2 is going to keep me occupied for a while, both with its story and online multiplayer. I may even play through it a second time if it continues impressing me this first playthrough.

Flower (PlayStation 3) - Only available on the PlayStation Network, Flower is made by thatgamecompany, who also created flOw, another title I never played but still led to a game I have found myself playing as of late. Flower works similarly to Everyday Shooter in that what you are doing directly creates music for the game. It runs completely using the Sixaxis control to speed the wind through the grass picking up flower petals and making flowers bloom. It is currently the number 2 download on the PSN, right behind Noby Noby Boy, so one has to think that it may actually be something special. And it is! Not in the way that Earthbound is special because if you find it at a collector's store, it still costs $150 without the original box or any form of dust-jacket, but in the way that Braid for the Xbox Live Arcade is special. It is unlike anything I've played before, but that may be because I never played flOw. The Sixaxis control is interesting, if not fun but that's because I dislike what the Sixaxis does to most PS3 games. It doesn't hurt Flower, but it would be nice to have the option of using the analog stick. The game is all about introspection and creativity and relaxing--something most games don't endure to, but thatgamecompany is out for something different. I am very much a fan of the games-as-art movement we find ourselves in if you look hard enough, and I believe this game does a good job without being too pretentious. Again, I've only played the first level or so, but how much different can each flower's dream be from the other?

That's it for my first post. I'm not sure how long reviews are generally going to read, but the Killzone 2 does seem a bit long. I guess that's to be expected as I try to explain my biases and preferences on the first go of it. Thanks for reading. Hopefully more will be up in time.

-Evan "Dez" O'Connor
PSN: Dark_P0rtal
Xbox Live: DarkP0rtal